Diagnostic Imaging1–16 Objective and Noninvasive Detection of Sub-clinical Lung Injury in Breast Cancer Patients After Radiotherapy
Section snippets
Aims
We employed technetium-99m hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (Tc-99m HMPAO) lung scan to detect sub-clinical lung injury after radiation therapy of 60 female patients diagnosed with right breast cancer.
Methods
The degree of pulmonary vascular endothelium damage was represented as lung/liver uptake ratios (L/L ratios) calculated on Tc-99m HMPAO lung scan. All patients underwent simple mastectomy and postoperative radiotherapy of approximately 50 Gy. We divided the patients into three groups according to the interval between radiotherapy and lung Tc-99m HMPAO lung scan: Group 1 included 20 patients who received the lung scan within 1-3 months after radiotherapy, group 2 included 20 patients were within
Results
The L/L ratios were 0.32±0.04 for normal controls, 0.59±0.10 for group 1, 0.55±0.07 for group 2, and 0.34±0.04 for group 3, respectively. Based on our preliminary results, we found that sub-clinical lung injury and significantly increased L/L ratio in breast cancer patients received radiotherapy may occur within the first 6 months after radiotherapy. However, the L/L ratio is markedly decreased after 9 months.
Conclusion
Our findings concluded that the degree of pulmonary vascular endothelium damage represented as the L/L ratio on Tc-99m HMPAO lung scan has the potential to be a sensitive, objective and noninvasive method to detect sub-clinical lung injury in breast cancer patients received radiotherapy.
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