[Bone marrow transplantation in patients with leukemia]. / Knochenmarktransplantation bei Patienten mit Leukämien.

Between October 1979 and March 1982, bone marrow transplantations were performed by the Tübingen Group for BMT on 19 patients with acute leukemia in remission and on one patient with chronic myelocytic leukemia in chronic phase. The conditioning regimen consisted of 2 x 60 mg cyclophosphamide/kg and 10 Gy whole-body irradiation with the linear accelerator. The lung dose was limited by shielding to 8 Gy. In 15 patients, the bone marrow cell suspension of the donor was preincubated with antihuman T-cell globulin (AHTCG) for prophylaxis of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). All patients showed prompt engraftment of donor cells with good hemopoietic function and complete chimerism. Under reverse isolation in sterile units, no severe bacterial or fungal infections were seen in the phase of bone marrow aplasia. Twelve in twenty patients survived between 25 and 900 days. A severe GVHD was seen only in two patients - one after preincubation with AHTCG. One patient died from relapse of his leukemia, another patient had a testicular relapse which was treated with local radiotherapy. Major problems were seen with chronic GVHD (six patients) and infectious complications, most importantly interstitial pneumonia, in the late post-transplant period.

[Postoperative moving field therapy of the thoracic wall with high energy electrons]. / Postoperative Bewegungsbestrahlung der Thoraxwand mit schnellen Elektronen.

With regard to the moving field irradiation of the thoracic wall with electrons, the dependence of the surface dose from the depth of the rotation axis, which had been determined theoretically and under simplifying hypotheses, is checked by phantom measurements. There is conformity between measurement and calculation if the moving field irradiation extends over an angular dimension which contains also fully the contribution of the electrons scattered in the collimated region. The consequences for the shielding of the environment of the irradiated region are discussed. The admissible deviations of the thorax from a circular cylindric form for given maximum dose differences can be taken from the calculations. A nearly constant surface dose can be reached despite differences of the thorax form, if the scattering of electrons perpendicular to the rotation axis comes from divergency centres whose distance from the rotation axis corresponds to the double length of the average thorax radius.

[The use of computer tomography in individual treatment planning (author's transl)]. / Einsatz des Computertomographen in der individuellen Bestrahlungsplanung.

Computer tomography provides the possibility of individual treatment planning. For this purpose it is necessary to obtain the matrix of linear absorption coefficient for the type of radiation used during radiotherapy. In this paper it is shown that it is necessary to obtain a cross section of the patient using rays of two different qualities. From these results and previous measurements on phantoms it is possible to calculate the density and effective atomic number. It is also shown that the most significant information is obtained from the density matrix, if ultra hard X-rays are used for radiation therapy; With this density matrix it is possible in a simple manner to take account of inhomogeneities within individual patients.