Assessment of Thyroid Lobe Dose in Breast Cancer Intraoperative Radiotherapy

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Considering the fact that a high dose is delivered in a single fraction of IORT, the evaluation of the dose at sensitive organs like thyroid is necessary.

The current study has aimed to evaluate the received dose to thyroid lobes in the breast IORT technique.

A total of 49 women with breast cancer undergoing IORT were enrolled in this cross-sectional study with census sampling. Immediately after tumor resection, a single dose of 20 Gray at the applicator surface was delivered using 50KV X-ray by an Intrabeam machine. The thyroid dose was detected using thermoluminescent detectors (TLD) 100 at the mid-thyroid line, left and right lobes.

The dose at the right and left lobes of the thyroid gland as well as the mid-thyroid line was found to be 40.18±35.44 mGy, 35.50±27.32 mGy, and 40.61±32.47 mGy, respectively. The right lobe received a significantly higher absorbed dose compared to the left lobe when the right breast was under IORT treatment. The same trend was seen with the left lobe and left breast under IORT treatment (P=0.0001 and P=0.018, respectively). The applicator size showed non-significant effects on the absorbed dose at the thyroid gland. Also, the applicator depth had a non-significant inverse effect on thyroid dose.

According to our findings, the absorbed dose at each thyroid lobe depends on the under-treatment side as well as the applicator size and depth (applicator upper surface distance from the skin).