of the same age.
Thus, to the precision obtainable with such a small sample
size, only the radium-related tumours contributed significantly to life-shortening of this population, with no evidence of non-specific effects.
C.
359.
DATA FROM RADIOTHERAPY PATIENTS
Doses administered to patients surviving radiotherapy are rather well
known and may be taken as the independent variable against which any possible
life-shortening could be tested.
The limitations with this group of people are
due to partial-body exposure and to the possible effects of the disease initially requiring radiotherapy.
360.
The relevant data should thus be taken critically.
Studies reported on patients are few and all of them negative, in that
none show life-shortening attributable to radiotherapy.
S¢rensen [S40] studied
patients treated for cancer of the uterine cervix in 1922-1929 in Copenhagen,
surviving for at least 5 years after treatment and having been followed for the
20 years thereafter,
ments:
Out of 798 eligible patients, 184 met the above require-
they were 49.1 years old at the time of treatment and the average
radium treatment received was about 6500 mg-hours, equivalent to 4.4 Mgm rad.
Sgrensen found that survival was not correlated with the stage of the disease
at diagnosis. Each patient lost on average 3.5 years of life by comparison with
the mortality experience of female Danish population. This excess of deaths was
exactly accounted for by patients who died during observation time for a recurrence of the neoplasia and there was no evidence that irradiation per sehad
decreased the survival rate of the patients without recurrence.
361,
Newell [N11] attempted to establish some correlation between integral
radiation dose and longevity in 217 women treated by radiotherapy at Stanford
University in 1924-1947.
The patients affected by cervical carcinoma in stages
I and II had survived fro 10 or more years after treatment.
Radium treatment
alone (6 Mgm rad) or radium in conjunction with x rays (37 Mgm rad) were used
in the therapy.
From the data Newell concluded that no life-shortening attri-
butable to radiation had occurred in the patients.
ted independently by Kohn, Bailar and Zippin
ginal records: their conclusion was the same.
The data were also evalua-—
[K20] who had access to the ori-