| Preface I |
The European group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) and the Project Managing Group for a project supported by the European Commission, that concerns bone marrow transplantation, have asked a group of radiophysicists and radiotherapists to suggest guidelines for total body irradiation. Bone marrow transplantation is one of the most important treatment modalities for hematologic malignancies, and total body irradiation is one of the key elements in bone marrow transplantation. Too much irradiation might kill the patient and too little might prevent engraftment or increase the risk of relapse.
The varieties used for total body irradiation are numerous. Each center seems to have its own tradition. This might hamper studies of other clinical parameters associated with bone marrow transplantation. Therefore, the guidelines presented in this work seem to be of importance. They could form the basis for new approaches to condition patients for bone marrow transplantation either by creating new modalities of total body irradiation per se, or to launch comparative studies with chemotherapy or combinations between total body irradiation and chemotherapy. Most likely, total body irradiation will continue to be an important part in the conditioning of malignant disease for bone marrow transplantation.