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Review
. 2022 May 2;14(9):2271.
doi: 10.3390/cancers14092271.

The Role of Hypofractionation in Proton Therapy

Alexandre Santos  1   2   3 , Scott Penfold  1   3 , Peter Gorayski  1   2   4 , Hien Le  1   2   4
Affiliations
Review

The Role of Hypofractionation in Proton Therapy

Alexandre Santos et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Hypofractionated radiotherapy is an attractive approach for minimizing patient burden and treatment cost. Technological advancements in external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) delivery and image guidance have resulted in improved targeting and conformality of the absorbed dose to the disease and a reduction in dose to healthy tissue. These advances in EBRT have led to an increasing adoption and interest in hypofractionation. Furthermore, for many treatment sites, proton beam therapy (PBT) provides an improved absorbed dose distribution compared to X-ray (photon) EBRT. In the past 10 years there has been a notable increase in reported clinical data involving hypofractionation with PBT, reflecting the interest in this treatment approach. This review will discuss the reported clinical data and radiobiology of hypofractionated PBT. Over 50 published manuscripts reporting clinical results involving hypofractionation and PBT were included in this review, ~90% of which were published since 2010. The most common treatment regions reported were prostate, lung and liver, making over 70% of the reported results. Many of the reported clinical data indicate that hypofractionated PBT can be well tolerated, however future clinical trials are still needed to determine the optimal fractionation regime.

Keywords: high dose; high dose per fraction; hypofractionation; proton therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Percentage of publications reporting on clinical outcomes with hypofractionated proton therapy between 2001 and 2021.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of treatment sites in reviewed publications.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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