title: [Whole body irradiation].
abstract: Total body irradiation produces a sufficient immunosuppression to prevent an allograft rejection. It can be used with chemotherapy as an "intensive" treatment aiming at the complete eradication of a malignancy--with the resulting bone marrow aplasia needing an autologous or allogeneic transplantation. In either case, a dose of some 10 Gy has to be delivered in the whole body, in one session at low dose rate or fractionated between several sessions. Such a dose is usually well tolerated--at any rate it does not carry too high a risk to contribute to induce an interstitial pneumonitis or a venous occlusive disease of the liver. The antitumoral efficacy of such limited dose is mainly important against very radiosensitive tumours--first of all leukemias and lymphomas. Yet some groups use also total body irradiation in the treatment of some solid tumours of dismal prognosis--for instance in case of advanced neuroblastomas or Ewing's sarcomas.
authors.affiliation: Service de Radiothérapie et de Médecine Nucléaire, Institut Jules Bordet, Bruxelles.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Regnier
mesh_terms: D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D006084:Graft Rejection / Q000528:radiation effects; D006801:Humans; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D014916:Whole-Body Irradiation
vernacular_title: L'irradiation corporelle totale.