A recent study conducted by the University of Salzburg at the General Hospital
of Salzburg, Austria and published in the January 2004 issue of Strahlentherapie und Onkologie, concluded that IORT boost at the time of
lumpectomy gave “excellent local control” and “appeared to be superior to conventional post-operative boost in short-term follow-up.”
In this study, the results of treating 188 patients with conventional post-operative radiation therapy and post-operative electron boost were
contrasted with 190 patients that also received post-operative radiation therapy but received an IORT boost at the time of lumpectomy.
The two groups of patients were comparable in age, menopausal status, tumor size, tumor grade and nodal status.
The patients that received the IORT boost had no local recurrences (median follow-up period of 25.8 months) while the patients treated
with conventional boost had a local recurrence rate of 4.3% (median follow-up time of 55.3 months). Interestingly, the IORT patients also
had a lower rate of distant metastases (1.1% vs. 7.9%).
The authors believe that IORT boost at the time of lumpectomy has the advantages of high precision, good cosmesis, and higher patient comfort.
These results are consistent with the more mature but smaller study of patients that received IORT as a breast boost treated at
the Medical College of Ohio and Montpellier, France. In this study, with follow-up times as long as 17 years, only one patient has had a local
recurrence, and that was 10 years after the initial treatment.
Salzburg has now treated more than 500 patients with IORT boost at the time of lumpectomy and more than 1000 women have received this
treatment from hospitals around the world. As more hospitals acquire the ability to provide IORT in the OR, through new technology like
the Mobetron, more women with breast cancer will benefit from this exciting new approach.
For more information on the Salzburg study, we refer you to read their publication in
Strahlentherapie und Onkologie
