Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer in Africa
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Purpose: Although radiation therapy is an effective treatment for breast cancer, it has a low rate of use in African countries. A
systematic review was undertaken to investigate studies that used radiation therapy as a treatment modality for patients with breast
cancer in Africa, focusing on survival outcomes, adverse effects, radiation therapy techniques, fractionation schedules, and effectiveness
of radiation therapy.
Methods and Materials: We conducted a comprehensive literature search for studies that treated breast cancer with radiation
therapy, using different electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, and EBSCOhost) up to February 2023. The output was exported to a
reference management system for analyses.
Results: The literature search primarily identified 3804 records from Scopus (2427), PubMed (982), and EBSCOhost (395). Based on
the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 19 articles were finally included in this systematic review. Most of the studies published were
conducted in North Africa (63%), followed by West Africa (21%) and Southeast Africa (16%). Most centers employed external beam
radiation therapy to deliver radiation therapy to patients with breast cancer with the standard fractionation size of 50 Gy in 25
fractions. The long-term outcomes with regards to adverse effect suggests that radiation therapy was fairly tolerated among patients
with breast cancer.
Conclusions: The reports provide substantial evidence that there are limited number of published studies on the use of radiation
therapy for breast cancer treatment in Africa, as well as lower overall survival rate compared with developed countries. To improve
breast cancer survivorship, it is necessary for government and other health care planners to provide more radiation therapy resources
and implement training programs for personnels.
Description
This article is published by Elseviere, 2023 and is also available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adro.2024.101488
Keywords
Citation
Advances in Radiation Oncology (2024) 9, 101488