Recent Developments in Radiation Oncology: An Overview of Individualised Treatment Strategies in Breast Cancer

Abstract

Radiation therapy (RT) for breast cancer has dramatically changed over the past years, leading to individualized risk-adapted treatment strategies. Historically, the choice of RT regimen was limited to conventional fractionation protocols using standard tangential fields. Nowadays, technological and technical improvements in modern RT have added a variety of other RT modalities, different fractionation schedules, and individualised treatment volumes to the portfolio of breast RT. This review aims to give a short overview on the main topics which have recently found their way into clinical practice: hypofractionated treatment protocols, accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) for low-risk patients, deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) for maximal heart protection, extent of regional nodal irradiation for high-risk patients, and the implementation of new radiation techniques such as intensity modulated RT (IMRT) and volumetric modulated RT (VMAT).