No injections of steroids. I will begin radiation treatment in a couple of days.

Hi Lisa,

I had not yet read about radiation making it more difficult to have surgery later on. I am going to Boise the week of June 16; I have an appointment with Dr. Kline for a consult and steroid injection; at that time I am going to schedule my radiation therapy for the fall. In other words, I am getting both injections and radiation therapy, just not at the same time. I want to wait until the fall for the radiation so that I can have a relaxed summer (although I hardly call 55 degrees "summer" here in Seattle) but I thought it would be a good idea to go to Boise next week, as I have the week off, get the injections, and ask Dr. Kline some questions during my office visit. I will ask him your question when I see him in person, and get back to you. I guess a twist to your question would be " does radiation also make it more difficult to have NA later if one needed it?"

Megan

Thanks for posting all this. I'm American but live in the UK and am looking into radiation here as well. It will be good to compare answers to the questions above on both sides of the pond. I also want to ask if radiation can do anything for knuckle pads and, of course, the risk of cancer involved.

That's really good to hear, Megan. The system's a bit slower in the UK, so I appreciate any info! Best of luck.

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I believe Dr. Kline's office assistant told me the amount of radiation is very small....approximately the amount you receive when flying on an airplane (my dentist always tells me that, too, when she wants to do x-rays and I balk about it). I saw my General Practitioner last week (not specifically about the Dupuytren's, it was just my annual exam) and told her about the radiation treatment and showed her some of the information about it off the Dupuytren Society website and she seemed unconcerned...she said she would only be concerned if it were getting into the bone. In fact, she sounded fairly interested that they were treating this with radiation.

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This is the bit that I'm unclear of and concerns me. I wish I could get more confident before the radiotherapy option passes me by. I think 30Gy is quite high and I can't imagine too many external sources that would give you that level of toxicity? Wikipedia says:
" Cancer - Radiation is a potential cause of cancer, and secondary malignancies are seen in a very small minority of patients, generally many years after they have received a course of radiation treatment. In the vast majority of cases, this risk is greatly outweighed by the reduction in risk conferred by treating the primary cancer. [edit] Cumulative side effects, Cumulative effects from this process should not be confused with long-term effects—when short-term effects have disappeared and long-term effects are subclinical, reirradiation can still be problematic.[1][edit] Dose, The amount of radiation used in radiation therapy is measured in gray (Gy), and varies depending on the type and stage of cancer being treated. For curative (radical) cases, the typical dose for a solid epithelial tumor ranges from 60 to 80 Gy, while lymphoma tumors are treated with 20 to 40 Gy.

I know we're told that it's low dose and does not penetrate deeply into the body or vital organs but 30Gy is 30Gy irrespective isn't it? It's said that nobody has developed cancer in the hand from radiotherapy treatment but have patients been monitored to see if the develop anything nasty further down the line?

I appreciate that the individual makes the decision but the information at hand just does not give me the confidence to take radiotherapy further I suppose if you haven't seen anyone close to you affected by cancer then you might perhaps be more open minded but if you have then it certainly makes you think!




Cambidgeshire, UK.

Edited at 06/14/08 01:45