Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer in Africa

PurposeAlthough radiotherapy is an effective treatment for breast cancer, it has a low utilization in African countries. A systematic review was undertaken to investigate studies that utilized radiotherapy as a treatment modality for breast cancer patients in Africa focusing on survival outcomes, adverse effects, radiotherapy techniques, fractionation schedules and effectiveness of radiotherapy.Methods and MaterialsWe conducted a comprehensive literature search for studies that treated breast cancer with radiotherapy, using different electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus and EBSCOhost) till February 2023. The output was exported to a reference management system for analyses.ResultsThe literature search primarily identified 3,804 records from Scopus (2,427), PubMed (982) and EBSCOhost (395). Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 19 articles were finally included in this systematic review. Majority of the studies published were conducted in North Africa (63%), followed by West Africa (21%) and South-East Africa (16%). Most centers employed External Beam Radiotherapy Technique (EBRT) to deliver radiotherapy to breast cancer patients with the standard fractionation size of 50 Gy in 25 fractions predominantly used. The long-term outcomes with regards to adverse effect suggests that radiotherapy was fairly tolerated among breast cancer patients.ConclusionsThe reports provide substantial evidence that there are limited number of published studies on the use of radiotherapy for breast cancer treatment in Africa, as well as lower overall survival rate compared to developed countries. To improve breast cancer survivorship, it is necessary for government and other healthcare planners to provide more radiotherapy resources and implement training programs for personnels.