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John H. Lawrence, MD; James L. Born, MD; John A. Linfoot, MD; Claude Y. Chong, MD
Berkeley, Calif

JAMA. 1970;214(11):2061.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Recently, criticism of the dangers of heavy particles has appeared (New Eng J Med, 282: 1434, 1970). It is important for us to clarify the picture because of our long experience in the use of heavy particles in therapy with excellent results.

Readers often equate one form of radiation therapy with another without consideration of the particle used, the dose administered, the rate of delivery, the stereotaxic method employed in the delivery, and, of most importance, the exact dose distribution. A detailed discussion of 13 years experience using the 910-mev a-particle beam from the 184-inch cyclotron to treat 131 patients with acromegaly has just been published.¹

All of the patients with acromegaly have been treated with the plateau portion of the a-particle beam using precise alignment and biplanar rotational techniques^2,3 with the exception of five patients. These five were selected for Bragg-peak therapy because they . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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