Disease Control of Uterine Cervical Cancer: Relationships to Tumor Oxygen Tension, Vascular Density, Cell Density, and Frequency of Mitosis and Apoptosis Measured before Treatment and during Radiotherapy

Identification of biological parameters of major importance for the control of malignant diseases can be useful for the design of optimal treatment regimes for individual patients. Tumor oxygen tension (pO 2 ), vascular density, cell density, and frequency of mitosis and apoptosis were measured before treatment (40 patients) and after 2 weeks of radiotherapy (22 patients) in patients with uterine cervical cancer. The aim was to investigate whether one of the parameters was more important for disease control than the others. Three sets of data were considered; the pretreatment parameters, the parameters measured after 2 weeks of radiation, and the changes in the parameters during this time. The pO 2 was measured polarographically; the other parameters were determined by histological analyses of tumor biopsies. Hypoxic subvolume ( HSV 5 ), i.e. , the fraction of pO 2 readings