Long delay in postoperative radiation therapy for breast cancer

[Palex80]

Hello everyone

I am looking for data on long delays in beginning post operative radiation therapy for breast cancer and whether or not this influences local recurrency risk.
More specifically, I am looking for data on women, who started radiation therapy only 6+ months after resection and did not receive chemotherapy.

Reasons for delay are irrelevant (wound healing, comorbidities, etc).

I recall having read a study about Caribbean (?) patients that underwent radiation therapy very late after surgery, but I am not able to find the article.
Most studies focusing on the correct time-slot for postoperative radiation therapy focus on delays of "weeks", for example >12 or <12 weeks after surgery, but I am looking for data on longer delays.

Does anyone have a clue?

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[Brim]

There are a number of studies looking at this. The majority of studies do show that there is an increased risk of IBTR if the surgery-to-RT interval is prolonged. However, there are also a number of studies that were negative.

Here is a listing of several studies:
Wikibooks:Breast/RT Technique: Effect of surgery to radiotherapy interval

In particular, the Florence study may be of some interest to you, since it looked at a group of patients with long (>6 month) delays. (This was one of the negative studies.)

Feel free to add to the list if you come across any other good studies.

 

[Palex80]

Thanks a lot for the link, I didn't imagine that wikibooks would cover this too. Great job!

Most of these studies I did know already. The Florence study does include chemo-patients do, which causes bias in the interpretation.


I recall reading a couple of years ago about a study which looked into Caribbean (?) females undergoing radiotherapy several months after surgery, because access to radiation facilities was a a problem. If I remember correctly, the study showed that as long as the patients are on tamoxifen, it shouldn't be much of a problem to delay radiotherapy.
But I may be wrong again and mixing stuff up. I tried to find this study again, but didn't manage to.