Abstract
Prophylactic cranial irradiation has been employed for both non-small and small cell lung cancer. What has motivated the use of prophylactic cranial irradiation is the frequency of central nervous system failure in both the non-squamous, non-small cell histology and in small cell lung cancer. Considering the success in pediatric leukaemias, investigators in the late 1960s and early 1970s hypothesised that systemic and local control would be manageable with chemotherapy (and perhaps thoracic radiotherapy), but sanctuary sites could harbour residual neoplastic cells protected from concentrations of chemotherapy achieved systemically by the blood-brain barrier. With the frequent relapses in the central nervous system, the use of early prophylactic cranial irradiation became common for SCLC, but its proven value is not established.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Turrisi, A.T. (1991). Cranial Irradiation. In: Bunn, P.A. (eds) Current Topics in Lung Cancer. ESO Monographs. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76784-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76784-5_9
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