Longer treatment duration increases the inconvenience and decreases patient compliance. Furthermore, this places extra financial and emotional hardship on the patient and her family, particularly if they must travel long distances between home and the treatment centre. Studies have found 10-30% of patients do not receive adjuvant radiotherapy after lumpectomy,placing these patients at higher risk for local recurrence and death from disease. Radiobiologically, a boost increases the risk of late normal tissue effects. In the EORTC study, they found significantly higher but limited rates of severe fibrosis at 10 years of 4.4% vs. 1.6% (p<0.0001) with the boost. No age effect was noted on the incidence of fibrosis. One study compared a shorter hypofractionated schedule of 42.5 Gy/16 fractions over 3.5 weeks with the standard schedule of 50 Gy/25 fractions over 5 weeks and observed comparable 5 year local recurrence rates and cosmetic outcomes.