Background: This is a retrospective study of patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) with the stereotactic body frame for centrally located lung tumours. The purpose was to investigate the doses to the different structures of the tracheobronchial tree and to relate these doses to the incidence of atelectasis. The goal was to estimate a tolerance dose for the bronchi. Materials: The patient material consisted of 71 patient treated at the Karolinska University Hospital for a total of 102 tumours between November 1993 and March 2004. The patient group consisted of 36 men and 35 women with a mean age at the treatment of 67 years (range 34-87). The group was a mixture of patients with primary lung cancer and pulmonary metastases. Methods: After rereading and reactivating the dose plans for the patients in the treatment planning system (TPS) the different tracheobronchial structures (trachea, right mainstem bronchus, right superior bronchus, right intermedius bronchus, right medius bronchus, right inferior bronchus, left mainstem bronchus, left superior bronchus, left intermedius bronchus, left inferior bronchus) were outlined. The dose distribution in each structure was calculated and a dose-volume histogram (DVH) was created. Patients were allocated to four groups, i.e. patients with right sided tumours (22), left sided tumours (14), mediastinal tumours (23) and bilateral tumours (10). After that the maximum and mean doses to all structures were analysed. An oncologist reviewed the medical records for the patients and especially looked for atelectasis. The doses were related to the incidence of atelectasis.Results and Conclusions: For the patient group with right sided tumours it seems like the maximum doses to the bronchi are higher for the patients with atelectasis in comparison with patients without atelectasis. A better correlation between atelectasis and maximum doses rather than mean doses was observed for these patients. At this moment the results are too preliminary, so it is not possible to suggest a tolerance dose for the bronchi. What can be said is that the maximum doses to the bronchi f...
