Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology
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Breast cancer patients are typically advised to avoid antiperspirants for fear of increasing radiation dermatitis in the axilla. We hypothesized that antiperspirants would have minimal effect on skin dose. We found no difference in surface dose±antiperspirants using 6MV photons at gantry angles of 0°/30°/60°/90° regardless of aluminum concentration.
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Single fraction radiation treatment (SFRT) is recommended for its equivalence to multiple-fraction (MF) RT in the palliation of uncomplicated bone metastases (BM). However, adoption of SFRT has been slow. ⋯ Although there is some variation between groups, the majority of guidelines recommend use of SFRT and others consider it to be a reasonable alternative to MFRT.
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Practice Guideline
European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) recommendations for planning and delivery of high-dose, high precision radiotherapy for lung cancer.
To update literature-based recommendations for techniques used in high-precision thoracic radiotherapy for lung cancer, in both routine practice and clinical trials. ⋯ Recommendations for the clinical implementation of high-precision conformal radiotherapy and stereotactic body radiotherapy for lung tumours were identified from the literature. Techniques that were considered investigational at present are highlighted.
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Primary non-small cell lung cancer cavitation and central photopenia, detected by radiology and FDG-PET scanning respectively, are thought to be the result of tumor necrosis. Such regions may contain hypoxic but viable carcinoma cells which may be relatively radioresistant compared with fully oxygenated regions. We hypothesized that photopenic tumors treated with radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy would be associated with worse survival compared with tumors not showing central photopenia. ⋯ This study failed to demonstrate a significantly worse survival associated with central photopenia in patients treated with radiotherapy for NSCLC.
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The need for radiation oncologists and other radiation oncology (RO) professionals to lead quality improvement activities and contribute to shaping the future of our specialty is self-evident. Leadership knowledge, skills and behaviours, like other competencies, can be learned (Blumenthal et al., 2012). The objective of this study was to define a globally applicable competency set specific to radiation oncology for the CanMEDS Leader Role (Frank et al., 2015). ⋯ This process resulted in 20 RO Leader Role competencies with apparent global applicability. This is the first step towards developing learning, teaching and assessment tools for this important area of training.