Radiation therapy for metastatic cancer of the spine

Spinal metastatic cancer is a common metastatic malignant tumor in bone system, accounting for about 80% of bone metastatic cancers. Since the spine is a good site for tumor metastasis, the diagnosis and treatment of this disease should be given sufficient attention. Early detection and timely treatment is the key to control the development of the disease. Early X-ray examination of this disease is not easy to find out, but once localized bone destruction is found, the pain is already very obvious, and even neurological dysfunction occurs. Localized pain is the main manifestation of this disease, and the first symptoms of the patients treated by the authors are mainly pain. In some cases, after the appearance of localized pain symptoms and the objective examination did not have typical positive findings, such cases should be noted, and need to be further examined. The treatment of this disease should be mainly aimed at pain relief and restoration of nerve function, while at the same time, attention should be paid to controlling the development of localized lesions and prolonging life as much as possible. Local radiotherapy is a very effective method for treating bone metastatic cancer. Literature reports that the effective rate of radiotherapy for pain relief of bone metastatic cancer reaches 70%-100%, especially the effect of pain relief in the near future is very remarkable and long-lasting. The purpose of radiotherapy is to relieve pain, prevent pathological fracture, improve patients’ mobility and prolong life. Radiotherapy for metastatic cancer of spine not only has obvious pain-relieving effect but also can kill tumor cells and play a certain role in controlling the development of lesions. Radiotherapy has certain pain-relieving effect on metastatic cancer of spine and also plays a good role in controlling the development of lesions. From the observation results of this group of cases, radiotherapy is more effective in the following cases. 1, those whose primary tumor is sensitive to radiation, 2, those whose single vertebral body is invaded without obvious spinal cord compression symptoms. 3. Cases with slow development of symptoms. Radiation therapy should be based on the scope of the lesion, the irradiation field generally includes the entire invaded vertebral body, irradiation of 50Gy-55Gy. Radiation therapy should be combined with hormones. The amount of spinal cord should also be paid attention to while radiotherapy. As this disease belongs to the advanced stage of tumor, generally the prognosis is poor, from the observation of this group of cases, it is found that the prognosis of metastatic cancer of spine is related to the following factors: 1) the malignant degree and control of the primary tumor, 2) the appearance of the metastatic lesion from the time of diagnosis of the primary cancer is shorter, the worse is the prognosis. 3, Single vertebral metastasis has a better prognosis. In addition to achieving the purpose of pain relief, the treatment of this disease should also give sufficient irradiation as far as possible to maximize the killing of the tumor, but the increase in the dose of radiotherapy seems to be bound to lead to spinal cord injury, with the continuous improvement of radiotherapy technology in recent years, especially the application of stereotactic radiotherapy technology can better protect the spinal cord, and improve the irradiation dose of the lesion and the local control rate of the disease is not less than a more ideal treatment technology. The application of stereotactic radiotherapy can better protect the spinal cord. Although metastatic cancer of the spine is a late-stage tumor, local radiation therapy can relieve pain and control the development of the lesion, and some patients still have the hope of long-term survival after reasonable treatment.