Interstitial brachytherapy

Sneed PK, McDermott MW, Gutin PH. Interstitial brachytherapy procedures for brain tumors. Semin Surg Oncol 1997 13 157-166. 

No distinct advantage has been noted when other forms of external beam irradiation, other than photons, or brachytherapy have been used. Neutron irradiation has not proven to be better than photons for stage III inoperable NSCLC (14,15). The use of brachytherapy has been limited to endobronchial treatment for palliation or as a boost after external beam. There have been institutional reports of interstitial brachytherapy, also usually done as aboost. Neither of these two approaches has been shown to be superiorto external beam (16,17). 

Ricke J, Wust P, Stohlmann A et al (2004) CT-guided interstitial brachytherapy of liver malignancies alone or in combination with thermal ablation phase I-II results of a novel technique. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 58 1496-... 

Wieners G, Pech M, Rudzinska M, Lehmkuhl L, Wlodar-czyk W, Miersch A et al (2006) CT-guided interstitial brachytherapy in the local treatment of extrahepatic, extrapulmonary secondary malignancies. Eur Radiol 16(ll) 2586-2593... 

G., Kooy, H. M., and Coleman, C. N. (1998). Real-time magnetic resonance image-guided interstitial brachytherapy in the treatment of select patients with chnically localized prostate cancer, Int. J. Radial. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 42, 507-515. 

Brachytherapy A procedure in which radioactive material, sealed in needles, seeds, wires, or catheters, is placed directly into or near a tumor. Also called internal radiation, implant radiation, or interstitial radiation therapy. 

External beam radiotherapy (including three-dimensional radiotherapy, intensity modulated radiotherapy, and extracranial stereotactic radiotherapy) is the most common way radiation is used to eradicate solid tumors, often with combined chemotherapy. The key limitation of external beam radiotherapy is the tolerance of normal liver parenchyma to radiation, which is much less than the dose required to control the liver tumors. Direct implantation of radionuclides into the tumor (brachytherapy) using interstitial seeds... 

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