Basic Clinical Radiobiology PDF

Preface

This is the fourth edition of Basic Clinical Radiobiology, which was first published in 1993. It is a teaching book which is directed at an international audience but has arisen and evolved largely from courses organized by the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) for students of radiotherapy, radiation physics and radiobiology. In this new edition, as previously, we have included as contributors many of the radiation oncologists and biologists from both Europe and North America who currently teach this material for those ESTRO courses that continue to take place now typically twice a year and attract students from all over the world.

The first three editions of this book were under the editorship of Gordon Steel, but in this new edition Gordon has passed the editing pen to his two senior co-teachers, who have both been involved in these international courses since their inception in 1990. We acknowledge and thank Gordon for his tremendous effort and expert stewardship over the first three editions, and we hope very much that, in this new edition, we have managed to maintain the high standard of content, presentation and accessibility that has always been an integral part of this project.

This new edition is the most extensive revision to Basic Clinical Radiobiology yet. New chapters have been added which review image-guided radiotherapy, biological response modifiers, the tumour microenvironment, and radiationinduced second cancers. Substantial additions have been made to the description of the pathogenesis of normal tissue side-effects, the molecular description of the DNA damage response, cell death, and molecular targeting and individualization. With clinical trials demonstrating that tumour-targeted molecules can improve the therapeutic ratio, these topics have become important in teaching radiation biology and questions on these subject areas are appearing in board examinations for radiation oncology and medical physics.

At the same time, we continue to provide in-depth coverage of the more established subjects of dose responses and fractionation including the linear-quadratic framework, time factors and dose-rate effects, volume effects and retreatment tolerance, tumour radiobiology, combined radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and the oxygen effect. Also well-covered are high-linear energy transfer (LET) effects, but now with additional presentation of the status of clinical usage of light ions and protons, which centres are starting to adopt in their radiotherapy practices.

Thus, with including the essential core material while adequately covering the rapidly expanding field of molecular radiobiology, both necessary for a full understanding of clinical radiotherapy, this new edition of the book is larger than the previous editions.Yet, we believe we have achieved the same high level of accessibility and ease of reading that have always been the hallmarks of this book and which we hope will once again make Basic Clinical Radiobiology a valuable companion to all people involved in radiation oncology, whatever their contribution and level of expertise.