Pulsed low-dose rate radiotherapy has an improved therapeutic effect on abdominal and pelvic malignancies

摘要

Until now, there has been a lack of standard and effective treatments for patients with recurrent malig‐ nant tumors or abdominal and pelvic malignancies with extensive invasion (Morris, 2000). Generally, these patients face problems such as inability to undergo surgery or chemotherapy resistance (Combs et al., 2016). Re-radiotherapy has achieved a prominent place in the treatment of patients who have received radiotherapy previously and developed in-field recur‐ rences (Straube et al., 2018). However, re-radiotherapy is very complicated, requiring comprehensive consid‐ eration of appropriate radiation dose, interval from first radiotherapy, boundary of the radiotherapy target area, and damage to surrounding normal tissues (Straube et al., 2019). In other words, it is neces‐ sary to focus on the protection of surrounding normal tissues while maximizing the efficacy of re-radiotherapy in such patients.