**3. Conclusion**

Severe degrees of ARD may cause local pain and burning, in addition to having a major impact on patients' quality of life and body image. Methods capable of predicting the occurrence and severity of ARD could improve RT planning. In addition to clinical tumor data and baseline data on patient characteristics, such as exposure to risk factors for ARD, the assessment of SNPs that can predict ARD could assist in patient follow-up and allow personalized RT planning. The use of predictive radiotoxicity genetic assays will allow patients who are more resistant to RT to receive higher doses of treatment without causing serious damage to adjacent tissues. Additionally, patients with lower RT tolerability receive another type of treatment or a lower dose of RT.

Thus, early detection of ARD susceptibility can improve the quality of life of patients who may develop severe ARD and the costs associated with the management of this radiotoxicity in the health care system.

Despite the promising role of SNPs in predicting ARD, studies have yielded inconsistent results and are not sufficient to confirm a significant association. Further studies are needed to confirm this hypothesis. We suggest that genes that have already been reported to have a statistically significant association in at least one study should be investigated in future.
