Single-dose radiotherapy for painful bone metastases.
BACKGROUND
External beam radiotherapy is frequently applied for palliative treatment of painful bone lesions with a variety of fractionation schemes. There is a continuous interest to administer only 1 or a few dose fractions for inducing pain relief.


METHODS
A review of the literature was made with the aim to determine whether a treatment can be deduced that is simple and effective. The linear-quadratic (L-Q) concept was applied to compare therapy schemes which each other for the iso-effect pain relief.


RESULTS
Single-dose and fractionated radiotherapy resulted in partial or complete pain relief in about 80% of the patients. Complete responses have been observed in about 43% of the patients. For patients responding to treatment, the duration of pain relief is at least 3 to 4 months with reported duration of up to 1 year or even longer.


CONCLUSIONS
Based on this review of literature data concerning randomized trials a treatment with a single dose of 8 Gy is effective for inducing pain relief.
Kal
H B
HB
Department of Radiotherapy/Radiobiology, Academic Hospital Utrecht, The Netherlands. h.kal@radcl.ruu.nl
D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000532:radiotherapy / Q000556:secondary*; D019583:Dose Fractionation, Radiation; D004307:Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D010147:Pain Measurement; D010166:Palliative Care; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D016896:Treatment Outcome