One year after treatment, 93 percent of patients were still alive, and 92 percent did not experience recurrence at their primary disease site.
Toxicities, or side effects, are measured on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 being the most severe. In this study, no patients were above grade 3, and the most severe toxicities at that level were mucositis (4 percent), loss of appetite (22 percent), and difficulty swallowing (7 percent).
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“Different disease sites required different dosage levels, and we specifically found the severity of muscositis was associated with higher doses of radiation,” Vogel said.
Those numbers are still well below what is typically associated with photon radiation. In rhabdomyosarcoma, for example, 46 percent of patients historically report grade 3 or 4 mucositis.
“These data show proton therapy is not only effective, it is also more tolerable for patients,” Hill-Kayser said. “This study shows this treatment is safe and offers practice guidelines for delivering head and neck proton therapy in the pediatric population.”
Researchers say they plan to follow up with these patients to evaluate long-term disease control and late-developing toxicity.
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