Chemoradiotherapy

Abstract

Chemoradiotherapy is now thought to be standard treatment for malignant tumors of the head and neck, uterine cervit, esophagus, and lung. Among various surgical approaches, chemoradiotherapy is considered to be a minimally invasive therapy. Chemoradiotherapy for head and neck cancer seems to be an optimal model of organ and function preservation, because the treatment modality would considerably change the status of swallowing, speech, breathing, mood and cosmetics. Although concurrent chemoradiotherapy is believed to be a standard care, toxicities are sometimes problematic regarding functional deficit and difficulty for salvage surgery. Induction chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy with or without concurrent chemotherapy is an attractive choice to balance efficacy and toxicities. New agents such as taxane and molecular-targeted drugs will strongly enhance treatment efficacy without increasing toxicities. Modern radiotherapy techniques could minimize the adverse effects of chemoradiotherapy. Intensity-modulated radiotherapy is thought to be a promising way to preserve parotid function and quality of life for patients with head and neck malignancy. Cervical cancer is also a good candidate for chemoradiotherapy. Patients with advanced disease should be treated with chemoradiotherapy or surgery followed by adjuvant chemoradiotherapy. Surgery with adjuvant chemoradiotherapy would increase toxicities, so careful patient selection for treatment modality becomes more important. Chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer of each stage is thought to achieve comparable surgical outcomes. Especially for patients in the early stage, chemoradiotherapy should be considered the treatment of choice because of less toxicity compared to surgery. Development of radiotherapy techniques and new drugs will open the window for minimum invasive treatment for several types of malignancy. However, more specialists such as radiation oncologists, radiation physicists, medical oncologists and supporting staff are greatly needed to achieve acceptable quality of treatment.