A review article by MD Anderson group. Using particle-beam therapy rather than photons offers the potential for further advantages because of the unique depth-dose characteristics of the particles, which can be exploited to allow still higher dose escalation to tumors with greater sparing of normal tissues, with the ultimate goal of improving local tumor control and survival while preserving quality of life by reducing treatment-related toxicity.

However, current clinical evidence is available from preclinical studies, from retrospective, single-institution clinical series, from analyses of national databases, and from single-arm prospective studies in addition to several ongoing randomized comparative trials.