Radiotherapy - Deep Inspiration Breathe Hold (DIBH)
1 minute read time.
FormerMember
Radiotherapy is a lot harder than I had anticipated. Practising the Deep Inspiration Breathe Hold (DIBH) does not come naturally.
This Involves holding your breathe for about 20 -30 seconds for each beam you receive. Inflating your lungs, the chest wall expands and pushes the heart away from the area being treated. It is apparently a technique that aims to significantly lower the amount of radiation dose to your lung and heart. I read somewhere that for every 1 Gy of radiation, there is a 7.4% increased risk of eventually developing a major cardiac event (such as a heart attack). I am receiving 40 Gy! The risk is highest among women who get radiation to the left breast since that’s where the heart is located.
Each day I have to hold my breathe 5 times as I get 3 beams from the right and 2 beams from the left. It sounds easy but it takes the radiologists quite a while to make sure you are aligned correctly, while you are lying there arms stretched up and topless. Then they rush out the room while you wait for the instructor to breathe in and hold. Sounds easy enough but the breathe has to be held at the right level, either breathe in a little more or breathe out a little more, get it wrong and you start again. For me, this needs to be done successfully five times over, every day.
Today is my 9th out of 15 sessions. I feel a stitch like pain on my right side (just beneath the rib cage) when I breathe in. Focusing so much on the breathing, I forget to mention this. The sharp pain continues as I make my way home. Pain is only slight, but sharp. When I get home, an hour later, the same pain is also occurring on my left side. A little worried but I'll mention to them tomorrow. I've already got aches and pains, the cording all along my arm, my breast area feeling like it has been punched but the 'stitch' pain is definitely a new one I've not felt before.
