Abdulla Alzibdeh, Resident Physician at King Hussein Cancer Foundation and Center, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article by Matthew Katz, et al, adding:

“Does radiation always increase cancer risk?

COVID-19 was an immense global challenge, but it also accelerated important progress across many fields, including radiation oncology. The urgency of maintaining cancer care during lockdowns pushed the specialty toward a new era of hypofractionation. Yet, a less discussed impact was the renewed interest in low-dose radiotherapy, or LDRT.

As explored in a recent article by Matthew Katz and Anthony Chalmers, the pandemic reopened a scientific conversation that had been dormant for decades. The debate around LDRT for COVID-19 pneumonia stimulated revisiting how complex and still-unresolved radiobiology truly is.

One of the most striking points in the article is the re-examination of data from atomic-bomb survivors. While high doses clearly increase risk, analyses have shown a possible decrease in cancer rates at the lower dose ranges (<0.1–0.2 Gy)!

This does not fit with the linear-no-threshold model. The authors argue that this suggests that it may be time to re-evaluate how we think about radiation effects at low doses.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it is that science advances by asking questions we once thought were settled. Such data may open new opportunities for radiation medicine in the years ahead.”

Matthew Katz, Interim Chair and Residency Program Director, Department of Radiation Oncology at Tufts Medical Center, shared Abdulla Alzibdeh’s post on LinkedIn, adding:

“Thank you Abdulla Alzibdeh for sharing our historical review. Thinking of radiation only as a danger limits our ability to study it as a biologic response modifier and treatment in non-cancer diseases. There are ways we can reframe radiation medicine that may be helpful.

We also need to reconsider how we define cancer. A new framework that doesn’t use a war metaphor can identify new potential solutions to improve outcomes. But that’s a topic for another paper.

Both for cancer and non-cancer, low dose radiation therapy deserves further research of the risk/benefit it provides for many diseases.”

Title: Radiation medicine at a crossroads: a historical perspective to consider future directions