Showing papers in "Radiotherapy and Oncology in 2003"

TL;DR: Mucositis is a frequent, severe toxicity in patients treated with RT for head and neck cancer and appears to lead to hospitalization and treatment interruptions, while its overall impact on outcomes has not been adequately investigated.

TL;DR: The objective of the present article is to present the consensus guidelines for the delineation of the node levels in the node-negative neck, and representative CTVs that are consistent with these guidelines are illustrated on CT sections.

TL;DR: A method for automatic volume segmentation of functional imaging based on a relationship between source-to-background ratio and the iso-activity level to be used is described, which has been established with radioactive spheres in a phantom.

TL;DR: In view of the consistency and extent of the survival benefit for CRT the additional acute toxicity appears to be acceptable, and the lack of data on long-term toxicity needs to be addressed.

TL;DR: In this article, a number of functional microregional parameters have emerged that are good candidates for future use as indicators of tumor aggressiveness and treatment response, and whether these parameters can be used as tools for selection of treatment strategies for individual patients.

TL;DR: The use of mitomycin or the presence of COPD is associated with a higher risk of radiation pneumonitis in lung cancer patients treated with thoracic irradiation and a clear trend toward statistical significance in the patient group without COPD.

TL;DR: Negligible differences were observed in dose distribution between CRT plans using bone+water CT number bulk-assigned image and original CT and the MR distortions were reduced to negligible amounts using large bandwidth MR sequence for prostate CRT planning.

TL;DR: There was wide variation in the observed tumor motion with more movement of lower lobe lesions, and the application of the correction protocol resulted in a significant improvement in the set-up accuracy.

TL;DR: The assumption that clinical normal tissue radiosensitivity should be regarded as a phenomenon dependent on the combined effect of variation in several genes is supported and models based on multiple genetic markers may have the potential to predict normal tissue responses after radiotherapy is indicated.

TL;DR: Carbon beam therapy attained almost the same results as surgery for stage I NSCLC although this was a I/II study, and the optimum safety and efficacy dose was determined.

TL;DR: Respiration-induced movement of the upper abdominal organs (pancreas, liver and kidneys) was assessed in 12 subjects using dynamic magnetic resonance imaging and was of the greatest importance to be aware of in the planning of a conformal radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer.

TL;DR: The most significant factor correlated acute GI toxicity in gynecology patients undergoing IM-WPRT is Vol(SB,100), which is fit to a normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) function.

TL;DR: Individualised nutritional counselling accounting for nutritional status and clinical condition, was able to improve nutritional intake and patients' QoL, despite self-reported symptoms.

TL;DR: The stereoscopic X-ray imaging device integrated with the real-time infrared tracking device represents a positioning tool allowing for the geometrical accuracy that is required for conformal radiation therapy of abdominal and pelvic lesions, within an acceptable time-frame.

TL;DR: The fiducial gold seeds are a safe and appropriate device to verify and correct the position of prostate during megavoltage irradiation of prostate carcinoma and are found to be far below the present tumour delineation accuracy.

TL;DR: This study documented both a large internal motion of the bladder and a substantial patient set-up variation during a course of fractionated radiotherapy, and found that an additional safety margin had to be added in the various directions.

TL;DR: The ICRU bladder reference point provides a good estimate of the dose computed for the bladder wall [D2] only in cases of appropriate balloon position, and the dose-volume histograms computed from external organ contour and organ wall delineation for bladder and rectum are indeed easier to obtain.

TL;DR: There was a trend that the most hypoxic tumours measured by oxygen electrodes had the highest score of necrosis, and no or little pimonidazole binding, and this observation was not consistent and there was no correlation between pimonidsazole staining expressed in this way and oxygen electrode measurements of hypoxia.

TL;DR: Prostate contouring on MR is associated with less inter-observer variation than on CT and this technique, together with on-line correction of treatment set-up according to the fiducial marker position on electronic portal imaging, may enable a reduction in the planning target volume (PTV) margin needed to account for inter-OBserver error in target delineation, and for prostate motion.

TL;DR: The protective effects of SOD and L-NAME suggest that inflammatory cytokines induced by the irradiation may be involved in the initiation of a reaction resulting in the production of reactive oxyradicals and nitric oxide that cause indirect DNA damage both in and out of the radiation field.

TL;DR: Catheter position and dosimetry has been formally evaluated in 20 consecutive patients representing a total of 332 catheters undergoing two HDR afterloading brachytherapy fractions over 36 h, and there was a significant impact on implant Dosimetry as measured by D90 and the COIN index.

TL;DR: Providing adequate set-up is chosen, accurate coregistration of CT, MR and FDG-PET images can be obtained in the head and neck area and this procedure was consistent and highly reproducible among observers.

TL;DR: It is highlighted that for individual patients the systematic error can increase after application of bony anatomy-based position verification, whereas the population standard deviation will decrease, thus enabling significant margin reduction.

TL;DR: External radiotherapy to the brain at a standard fractionation regime will cause varying degrees of late neurotoxicity and/or neuroendocrine disturbances in most patients, and life-long follow-up is recommended.

TL;DR: The effect of prolonging fraction time at conventional dose/fraction is underestimated by biological models, and this should be considered when IMRT technique is implemented in the clinic.

TL;DR: Improvements regarding dosimetry and treatment planning are needed as well as an increased knowledge about the tolerance doses for normal tissues and the radiobiological effects on tumour cells in targeted radionuclide therapy.

TL;DR: This study shows tumour progression during the time between the diagnostic CT scan and the treatment planning CT scan in oropharyngeal cancer, which allows tumour volume increase, and there may be an average control loss of 16-19 % for these tumours during the total waiting time before radiotherapy.

TL;DR: Three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy enables significant dose escalation in NSCLC and the maximum tolerable dose has not yet been reached in any risk group.

TL;DR: Analysis of the data from the current study demonstrates that the adverse effect of treatment prolongation was observed later in the treatment course for the high-dose rate (HDR) series compared to the LDR analog, however, treatment-time prolongation still negatively influenced the cause-specific survival and pelvic control rate for both dosage groups.

TL;DR: A clear progression from acceptable to intolerable mucosal reactions was found, which correlated with total biologically effective dose (BED in the authors' published modeling), for all the head and neck cancer radiotherapy schedules available for study, when ranked into categories of 'intolerable' or 'tolerable'.