Introduction: Breasts are paired skin glands that stay rudimental for the whole life of males, however, in females, they develop, grow and differentiate after puberty. We divide the breast into four quadrants: axillary extension, breast nipple and the central part or areola. Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumour among women, since approximately every ninth woman is affected. We have the best chance at curing it if it is discovered in its early stages. Breast cancer can be invasive or non-invasive. We use three methods of oncologic treatment: surgical, radiotherapy and systematic treatment. The choice of the treatment method depends on the stage of the disease, type of tumour and general health condition of the patient. Tumours are irradiated using linear accelerators. We can irradiate using electrons or photons. Standard radiotherapy includes 2 or more irradiation fields with a total dosage of 42.72 or 50 Gy, which the patient receives in 3–6 weeks with one fraction a day. After that, the patient may receive a boost to tumour bed. The boost is usually divided into 5–8 fractions. The boost is used with the intention of better local control of the tumour. Purpose: To compare the frequency of use of electron and photon boost, and the use of standard irradiation (no boost). Methods: In the research, we included the data of patients with breast cancer, which were irradiated on specified linear accelerators in the specified time interval. We gathered the data from an internal software in the Institute of oncology Ljubljana. We gathered data from 671 patients, which were processed with the use of data processing software. Results: After the processing of data, we found out that in most cases the use of boost was unnecessary. If the boost was used, it was usually electron boost since the photon boost was used in less than one twentieth of all cases. Discussion and conclusion: We use the electron boost to irradiate the tumour bed of those tumours that lie near the surface of the skin, and the photon boost when the tumour bed lies deeper in the tissue. This can be explained with the fact that the penetration of electrons is lower in comparison to the photons. The results of our research show that the electron boost is used more frequently than the photon boost. These results were to be expected, since the majority of authors got similar results.
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