BACKGROUND We determined whether physicians involved in a clinical trial adhere to the study recommendations or the stated policy of their treatment centre with respect to the administration of boost radiation after breast conserving surgery. PATIENTS AND METHODS Boost radiation treatment policy was determined by survey at 25 oncology centres involved in a randomised trial of breast or breast...

The evidence-based policy (EBP) movement has received significant attention in the scientific literature; however, there is still very little empirical research to provide insight into how policy decisions are made and how evidence is used. The lack of research on this topic in low- and middle-income countries is of particular note. We examine the maternity waiting home policy in Timor-Leste to...

This study presents the basic dosimetric properties of photon beams of a Versa HD linear accelerator (linac), which is capable of delivering flattening filter-free (FFF) beams with a beam quality equivalent to the corresponding flattened beams based on comprehensive beam data measurement. The analyzed data included the PDDs, profiles, penumbra, out-of-field doses, surface doses, output factors,...

In this work, soft-tissue equivalence of water, polystyrene, PMMA and water equivalence of polystyrene, and PMMA has been assessed for multiple megavoltage photon beams and field sizes. EGSnrc based Monte Carlo (MC) codes, BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc are used for the linac head modeling and the phantom dose calculations, respectively. Percentage depth doses (PDDs) are scored for two field sizes (5 × ...