AIM To assess clinical outcomes of patients treated with a high-dose rate brachytherapy boost for anal canal cancer (ACC). METHODS From August 2005 to February 2013, 28 patients presenting an ACC treated by split-course external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and HDR brachytherapy with or without chemotherapy in a French regional cancer center in Nice were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS Median...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the results of hypofractionated accelerated CT-guided interstitial HDR-BRT using 2.5 Gy per fraction. From December 2008 to March 2010, 30 patients were treated for recurrence of previously-irradiated head and neck cancer. Thirteen patients underwent surgical resection followed by HDR-BRT to the tumour bed. Seventeen patients were treated with HDR-BR...

PURPOSE The goal of this study was to determine the dose contributions from image guided adaptive brachytherapy (IGABT) to individual suspicious pelvic lymph nodes (pLNN) in cervical cancer patients. Data were collected in two cancer centers, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) and University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU). MATERIAL AND METHODS 27 and 15 patients with node positiv...

PURPOSE The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) has been increasing over the past 30 years. There are different treatment options and surgical excision is the most frequent treatment due to its low rates of recurrence. Radiotherapy is an effective alternative of surgery, and brachytherapy (BT) might be a better therapeutic option due to high radiation dose concentration to the tumor wi...

BACKGROUND Surgery of locally advanced and/or recurrent rectal cancer can be complemented with intra-operative electron radiation therapy (IOERT) to deliver a single dose of radiation directly to the unresectable margins, while sparing nearby sensitive organs/structures. Haemorrhages may occur and can affect the dose distribution, leading to an incorrect target irradiation. The TachoSil (TS) su...

AIM To report the long-term results of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy (BT) boost for breast cancer patients treated with conservative surgery and radiotherapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between 1995 and 2007, 100 early-stage breast cancer patients received an HDR BT boost after conservative surgery and whole breast irradiation. Ten patients (10%) received a single-fraction HDR boost of 8-10.3...

PURPOSE  To determine the long-term oncologic outcomes and toxicity of patients treated with definitive chemo-radiotherapy for cervical cancer.  METHODS AND MATERIALS  The study period was January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009. All patients diagnosed with cervical cancer who received curative-intent chemoradiotherapy were included. Patients were excluded if they resided out of the province, re...

PURPOSE Many planning methods for high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy require an iterative approach. A set of computational parameters are hypothesized that will give a dose plan that meets dosimetric criteria. A dose plan is computed using these parameters, and if any dosimetric criteria are not met, the process is iterated until a suitable dose plan is found. In this way, the dose distribution...

PURPOSE To present a novel needle, catheter, and radiation source system for interstitial rotating shield brachytherapy (I-RSBT) of the prostate. I-RSBT is a promising technique for reducing urethra, rectum, and bladder dose relative to conventional interstitial high-dose-rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT). METHODS A wire-mounted 62 GBq(153)Gd source is proposed with an encapsulated diameter of 0.59...

OBJECTIVES Tumour recurrence of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) after initial treatment with surgical resection, radiotherapy and chemotherapy is an inevitable phenomenon. This retrospective cohort study compared the efficacy of interstitial high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR-BRT), re-resection and sole dose dense temozolomide chemotherapy (ddTMZ) in the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma after i...