Collagen vascular diseases and radiation therapy: A critical review

Purpose: Although many oncologists have the impression that patients with collagen vascular disease tolerate radiotherapy less well than other patients, until now this was never described in a review article. Methods and Results: The principal objective was to determine whether patients with collagen vascular diseases have a greater risk of severe radiation therapy complications, than those without a collagen vascular disease. However, most of the publications found on this topic are short anecdotal case reports of patients with increased toxicity after radiation. Consequently, the true incidence of these side effects is unknown. Conclusions: Unless further studies on this subject are reported, each radiation oncologist should be cautious in treating these patients. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.