Fewer fractions of adjuvant external beam radiotherapy for early breast cancer are safe and effective and can now be the standard of care: Why the UK’s NICE accepts fewer fractions as the standard of care for adjuvant radiotherapy in early breast cancer

Fractionation regimes for individual tumour sites have varied greatly across the UK for many years. This has been particularly true for breast cancer which accounts for up to 40% of a radiotherapy department’s work load. Over the last 30 years or so many UK oncology centres have coped with this large case load and a lack of megavoltage machines by reducing fractionation and routinely using internationally non standard regimes so that these regimes have themselves become one of the options for standard treatment. Nowadays, medicine is largely evidence based rather than historically relying more on clinical experience or intuition. Large studies particularly in the UK and Canada set out to address this question and have shown that fewer fractions are equivalent in terms of local recurrence, late tissue effects and cosmesis. Current studies are focusing on further hypofractionation and partial breast radiotherapy (see papers Yarnold (2010) Is it safe to push “hypofractionation” further?. The Breast (this issue). Lehman (2010) The less than whole breast radiotherapy approach. The Breast (this issue)).