Science & Healthcare

Background: In the Republic of Kazakhstan, breast cancer takes a leading position among all malignant neoplasms in women. Radiation therapy is a standard and obligatory component of complex treatment of breast cancer. Daily fractions use of 2 Gy to a total focal dose of 50 Gy is the traditional standard scheme for radiotherapy treatment. However, due to the increase in the number of detected diseases at an early stage, approaches to the treatment of breast cancer have changed in recent years. Acute radiation skin reactions are one of the most frequent side effects of this type of treatment, which in turn is a risk of stress in most patients, and in some cases, a factor limiting the receipt of the full dose of radiation according to the treatment plan. Determination of the most appropriate tactics to prevent acute skin toxicity remains a problem for oncologists, due to the limited number of clinical studies that would help predict skin reaction for irradiation, as well as measures to prevent radiation-induced skin damage/

The aim of the study is the incidence assessment of skin toxicity after a daily using of 2.7 Gy to a total dose of 43.2 Gy to the patient’s breast.

Materials and methods: Study design is non-randomized clinical trial. In the period from 2014 to 2017 we analyzed the results of treatment of two groups of patients who received hypofractionated radiation therapy (n = 80), as well as radiotherapy in the traditional mode (n = 80). The skin toxicity was examined at the course of the treatment, 3 and 6 months after treatment by the international scale for assessing criteria of acute radiation reactions developed by the American Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG, 1995). Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparing data between two groups. Analysis was performed with SPSS ver.20 software.

Results: It was established that after providing hypofractionated radiation therapy more than 80% of the patients had no acute radiation reactions of skin; the average toxicity (> 2 nd degree) was minimal in these patients (p = 0.023) in comparison with the standard radiotherapy regimen.

Conclusions: Hypofractionated radiation therapy gives better results than traditional radiotherapy, due to lower fractional doses of radiation on the skin. The implemented method of hypofractionated radiation therapy in the program of complex treatment in patients with breast cancer made it possible to reduce the incidence of early radiation damage to the skin and subcutaneous fat. However, some toxic phenomena may take time to develop