TB Fluoroscopy

Follow-up though Dec 31, 2002 has been completed for site-specific cancer mortality among tuberculosis patients treated with artificial lung collapse therapy in Massachusetts TB sanatoria (1930-1950). Treatment involved frequent chest fluoroscopy examinations, which delivered highly fractionated radiation doses to breast, lung, and other thoracic organs. The estimated mean doses to breast and lung for these patients are 0.74 and 0.84 Gy, respectively. In earlier analyses, breast cancer, but not lung cancer was linked to cumulative radiation dose. Those results are consistent with the other cohort of tuberculosis patients exposed to chest fluoroscopy in Canada. Acquiring new cancer cases, particularly lung cancer, should allow us to conduct a more detailed dose-response analysis and refine risk estimates for fractionated radiation. This analysis is in progress and it is expected that results will be presented at the American Statistical Association meeting in June of 2008.