After five years, hearing loss impacted 16 percent of participants, and 80 percent have progression-free survival. More than half of the patients were having trouble related to hormones but there were no reports of cardiac, pulmonary, or gastrointestinal toxic effects — which are common after conventional radiation therapy.

While the authors acknowledge their lack of a control group as a study limitation, they noted that randomized trials comparing conventional radiation therapy and proton therapy in children have been deemed unethical in the U.S. and abroad. "Our findings suggest that proton radiotherapy seems to result in an acceptable degree of toxicity and had similar survival outcomes to those achieved with photon-based radiotherapy," said the authors, who emphasized the importance of eliminating the toxic effects on the body's cardiac, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal systems that arise frequently from conventional care.


Proton radiotherapy resulted in acceptable toxicity and had similar survival outcomes to those noted with conventional radiotherapy, suggesting that the use of the treatment may be an alternative to photon-based treatments, they concluded.

The value of proton therapy for treating head and neck tumors in pediatric patients has long been recognized by advocates of the treatment, but illustrating those benefits in clinical trials is a vital step in the scientific process, and establishing the treatment's efficacy responsibly. Still, the prohibitive costs associated with proton therapy have caused some health professionals to question its value — particularly in cases when the facilities are predominately treating seniors with prostate cancer who may have less to gain from the treatment relative to conventional therapy.

"I believe that radiation oncologists have always understood that our treatments are associated with the potential for severe adverse effects. I also believe that many in radiation oncology embrace new technology, not simply to have the latest and greatest innovations, but rather to reduce the effect of radiation therapy on patients' quality of life. Nowhere in oncology is this more important than for paediatric cancers," wrote Dr. David R. Grosshans, department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in a comment linked to the research.

"This study sets a new benchmark for the treatment of paediatric medulloblastoma and alludes to the clinical benefits of advanced radiation therapies," he concluded.

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