Clinical evaluation of endolymphatic radiotherapy in malignant lymphoma.

By endolymphatic injection of radioisotope 131I.Lipiodol, so.called endolymphatic radiotherapy, we treated 10 cases with malignant lymphoma and found a marked tumor reduction to normal size in all the 10 cases we tried. It seems that this method is one of the most effective therapeutic methods for malignant lymphoma, espe. cially invading into the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. ∗PMID: 4368508 [PubMed indexed for MEDLINE] Copyright c ©OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL Acta Med. Okayama 28, HI-H8 (1974) CLINICAL EVALUATION OF ENDOLYMPHATIC RADIOTHERAPY IN MALIGNANT LYMPHOMA Shozo IRINa, Tameyo T ANJI, Junichiro UNO and Akira OKA Department of Internal Medicine, Okayama University Medical School, Okayama, Japan (Director: Prof. K. Hiraki) Received for publication, July 9, 1973 Abstract: By endolymphatic injection of radioisotope 131I.Lipiodol, so.called endolymphatic radiotherapy, we treated 10 cases with malignant lymphoma and found a marked tumor reduction to normal size in all the 10 cases we tried. It seems that this method is one of the most effective therapeutic methods for malignant lymphoma, espe. cially invading into the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. By endolymphatic injection of radioisotope 131I.Lipiodol, so.called endolymphatic radiotherapy, we treated 10 cases with malignant lymphoma and found a marked tumor reduction to normal size in all the 10 cases we tried. It seems that this method is one of the most effective therapeutic methods for malignant lymphoma, espe. cially invading into the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. It was FISCHER and ZIMMERMAN (1) who first suggested a possibility of applying lymphography for the treatment, and WALLACE et al, (2, 3) attempted first to inject therapeutic materials into the lymph vessels for treatment. Subsequently, there appeared many reports by CHIAPPA et al, (4-7) who treated malignant lymphoma and metastatic lymph nodes by injecting 1311_ Lipiodol into the lymphatics, the so-called endolym,phatic radiotherapy. Simultaneously ARIEL (8, 9), SEITZMAN (10), BETOULIERES et al, (11), LIEBNER (12), zum WINKEL et al, (13) have reported the efficacy of this therapeutic method on malignant lymphoma. Despite these clinical studies carried out using endolymphatic isotopes, there is still controversy on the importance and limitations of this method in the treatment of malignant lymphoma. In addition, there is as yet no report on study concerning this therapy in Japan. In our experimental study on dogs, we reported that this method had little side-effect and it showed the irradiation effect selectively on lymph nodes (14). Since then we have applied this therapeutic method to patients with malignant lymphoma and observed a marked reduction of tumors in all the cases we treated. Here we present our clinical results. PATIENTS AND METHODS The patients on whom endolymphatic radiotherapy was attempted were 10 cases as shown in Table I ; consisted of 3 cases of Hodgkin's disease, 4 reticulum cell sarcomas, one lymphosarcoma and two chronic lymphatic leukemia. The isotope used was intralymphatic injection iodinated triolein 1311 in Lipiodol U. -F. (a product of the Radiochemical Center, England and abbre. viated as 131I.Lipiodol in this report). To each case 4.5 ml 131I-Lipiodol con·