In the United States in 1993 the American Cancer Society estimated that there were about 1,300,000 new cases of invasive cancer diagnosed. At the time of presentation about 70% of those patients represented limited local regional disease without evidences of distant dissemination. About 30% of the patients had demonstrated metastatic disease at the time of initial diagnosis or about 390,000 patients. Of those patients with local regional disease about 56% would be cured by the best treatment programs including surgery, radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy when given for cure....

The impact of basic science radiobiological research is now being recognized of significant importance in clinical radiation oncology. Observations made in the laboratory using animals as'well as tissue culture have led to a better biologic understanding of techniques for altered fractionation, techniques for measuring tumor cell proliferation, the possi bilities and limitations of methods for evaluation of nonrandomized clinical studies in deriving time dose relationships for human tumors as well as a better understanding of repair kinetics in mammalian cells, fractionation sensitivity and...

The incidence, diagnosis, and treatment of gynecologic cancer have undergone major changes during the past 20 years. In addition to significant changes in the incidence of the diseases, there has been extensive application of new technologies in the field. - While the incidence of invasive cancers of the cervix has diminished sharply, there has been a marked increase in the number of patients presenting with in situ carcinomas of the cervix. This has resulted primarily from better education but also from the regular use of Papanicolaou screening for early diagnosis. This trend has been...