Pelvic radiotherapy for gynecologic malignancies damages the primary active bone marrow reservoir, inducing hematologic toxicity exacerbated by chemotherapy. Optimizing pelvic bone marrow dose-volume constraints is critical to mitigate myelosuppression and maintain treatment efficacy. The present retrospective cohort study analyzed patients with gynecological cancer (n = 61) undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy between August 2021 and August 2024. Associations between pelvic bone marrow (PBM) dose-volume parameters and acute hematologic toxicity (AHT) were systematically evaluated. All patients received intensity-modulated radiotherapy encompassing pelvic lymph node regions, with weekly complete blood count monitoring during and for 2 weeks after treatment. The overall incidence of AHT was 70.5% (43/61), with grade ≥ 2 and ≥ 3 AHT occurring in 63.9% (39/61) and 30.0% (14/61) of patients, respectively. Multivariate analysis identified PBM-V15 as an independent predictor of grade ≥ 2 AHT odds ratio (OR), 2.653; 95% CI, 1.054-6.682; P = 0.038, with an optimal cutoff threshold of 80.44% area under the curve (AUC), 0.854. Notably, a lower PBM (LPBM)-V5 specifically predicted grade ≥ 3 AHT (OR, 1.425; 95% CI, 1.022-1.987; P = 0.037), with a threshold of 91.25% (AUC, 0.695). Implementing bone marrow-sparing strategies by restricting PBM-V15 to <80.44% significantly reduced the grade ≥ 2 AHT risk, while a stringent LPBM-V5 constraint (< 91.25%) was pivotal for preventing severe (grade ≥ 3) AHT. These dose-volume parameters should be incorporated into optimization protocols for pelvic radiotherapy in gynecological malignancies.
Zhou et al. (2026) studied this question.