Scheduling of radiation therapy for oncology
The usual schedule for radiation oncology treatment is a planned schedule of 5 consecutive treatments Monday through Friday, with Saturday and Sunday off.
There are 2 benefits to this schedule:
- Tumor tissue subjected to 5 consecutive radiation treatments is able to accumulate sufficient killing effect.
- Two days of rest to repair damage to normal tissue, which has the ability to repair and recover more quickly than tumor tissue, and two days of rest before starting a new round of treatment.
Try to avoid unscheduled interruptions of radiation therapy
All unplanned interruptions of radiation therapy should be avoided whenever possible. Unplanned treatment interruptions can lead to a prolongation of the total treatment time such that the local control rate of the tumor decreases. This is because, as is the case with tumors, tumor cells appear to grow faster than they would otherwise when they are killed to a certain extent.
Medically, this is called accelerated repopulation of tumor cells, which can be interpreted as faster growth of tumor cells, but, in general, shorter interruptions of radiation therapy have less impact on outcomes. The effect on the treatment effect is a little more pronounced when the interruption of radiotherapy is greater than 1 to 2 weeks.