Radiographic evaluation of pulmonary fibrosis following mantle field irradiation in Hodgkin's disease.

Abstract

Sixty-nine patients given mantle field radiation therapy for Hodgkin's disease and considered relapse-free and possibly cured were re-examined for pulmonary fibrosis as observed on antero-posterior and lateral chest radiographs. A method is described for the systematic evaluation of these late stage changes, which are observed following irradiation, in a numerical form. The method gave reproducible results in this series, the correlation coefficient being 0.72/0.81 and 0.73 respectively for the intra-observer and the inter-observer variations. The method thus may facilitate comparison between different patient materials.