In prostate cancer patients, high radiation doses to the urethra have been associated with an increased risk of severe genitourinary toxicity following dose-escalated radiotherapy. Urethra-sparing techniques have emerged as a promising approach to reduce urinary toxicity. This international survey aims to evaluate current global practices in urethra-sparing and explore future directions for the implementation of this technique in external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) for prostate cancer.

A disproportionate incidence's increase of rectal cancer in patients younger than 50 years of age. The ESMO and NCCN recommendations are not age-specific and the literature is poor and conflicting. We decided to examine patients with rectal cancer treated in our centre in the last 15 years with curative neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy comparing outcomes in the two groups under and over 55 years old.

To use imaging data from stereotactic MR-guided online adaptive radiotherapy (SMART) of ultracentral lung tumors (ULT) for development of a safe non-adaptive approach towards stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) of ULT.

Nausea is a common symptom in patients irradiated for benign brain tumors. The dorsal vagal complex (DVC) located in the brainstem (BS) has been identified as the center of nausea and vomiting. The objective of our study was to determine an association between mean dose to the DVC and nausea.

Radiotherapy for brain, head & neck (HN), and skull base (SB) tumors may deliver significant radiation dose to the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA), leading to impaired functioning of this region and hence, to endocrine disorders. The purpose of this systematic review and -analysis is to investigate literature on HP dysfunction after radiation for non-pituitary brain, HN, or SB tumors at adult age, aiming to give insight in the prevalence of HP dysfunction related to radiation dose.

Therapeutic options for patients with brain metastases (BM) increase. While these lead to considerable survival effects in subgroups, there is limited knowledge about characteristics, prognosticators and treatment effects in patients with BM and short survival.

Combining radiotherapy (RT) with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) is a promising strategy that can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of ICIs. However, little is known about RT-induced changes in the expression of immune checkpoints, such as PD-L1, and their clinical implications in colorectal cancer (CRC). This study aimed to investigate the association between responsiveness to RT and changes in PD-L1 expression in human CRC tissue and cell lines.

Pediatric radiotherapy patients and their parents are usually aware of their need for radiotherapy early on, but they meet with a radiation oncologist later in their treatment. Consequently, they search for information online, often encountering unreliable sources. Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to serve as an educational pretreatment tool, providing reliable answers to their questions. We aimed to evaluate the responses provided by generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), the most popular subgroup of LLMs, to questions about pediatric radiation oncology.

Radiotherapy induces tumor cell killing by generating DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). The effectiveness of radiotherapy is significantly influenced by the repair of DSBs, which counteracts this lethal effect. Current investigations are focused on determining whether non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) or homologous recombination is the predominant repair pathway following proton and photon radiation.

This study leveraged standard-of-care CT scans of patients receiving unilateral radiotherapy (RT) for early tonsillar cancer to detect volumetric changes in the carotid arteries, and determine whether there is a dose-response relationship.

This study assessed the treatment time of online adaptive (i.e. Adapt-to-Shape, ATS) and virtual couch shift (i.e. Adapt-to-Position, ATP) magnetic resonance guided radiotherapy (MRgRT) on a 1.5 Tesla MR-Linac. Additionally, the transition from a radiation oncologists (RO)-led to a radiation therapist (RTT)-led workflow, and the presence of a learning curve were assessed.

Cardiac stereotactic body radiotherapy is a promising noninvasive treatment for patients with refractory ventricular tachycardia. With the aim to prove feasibility of a novel image guided radiotherapy and heart motion gating device, cardiac proton radiotherapy was performed using a porcine model. Using a novel adaptation of γ - H2AX tissue staining techniques, we have been able to localize a radiation beam in large animal tissue to assess targeting accuracy within a defined field. Cardiorespiratory-gated irradiations of the animals were successfully completed and analysis of the γ-H2AX staining intensity of the excised heart after radiation demonstrated radiotherapy was delivered close to or within the expected region. We simulated the irradiated volumes under different gating scenarios, showing significant reduction when using combined cardiorespiratory gating. The results of this study show the feasibility of proton irradiation of the heart left ventricle with a novel ultrasound based cardiorespiratory gating technology with the benefit of reduced irradiation volumes and increased healthy tissue sparing.

Understanding the cellular and molecular effect of proton radiation, particularly the increased DNA damage complexity at the distal end of the Bragg curve, is current topic of investigation. This work aims to study clonogenic survival and DNA damage foci kinetics of a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cell line at various positions along a double passively scattered Bragg curve. Complementary studies are conducted to gain insights into the link between cell survival variations, experimentally yielded foci and the number and complexity of double strand breaks (DSBs).

In lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) using a breath-holding technique, displacement of tumor during breath-holding is rarely considered. This study used four-dimensional (4D) dose calculation with cine computed tomography (CT) to evaluate the impact of unexpected tumor position displacement during breath-holding on the target dose of lung volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT)-SBRT.

The role of elective pelvic nodal irradiation (EPNI) for high-risk prostate cancer (hrPC) management is still an open issue, especially for the elderly patients. It is unclear whether older patients can experience the same benefit from the treatment strategies used for younger men. Hence, in absence of solid data, it appears reasonable to pursuit a shared decision-making process so that older patients can express their informed preferences about the different treatment options. In this letter, we discuss why caution appears reasonable on EPNI trade-off in hrPC patients aged 75 years or more.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.ctro.2023.100678.].

To develop a single NTCP model for grade ≥ 2 late rectal bleeding (G2 LRB) after conventional or hypofractionated radiotherapy for prostate cancer.

Stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a heterogeneous disease, with a spectrum of anatomic extent, health status, and treatment approaches. Receipt of treatment and its intent should be independent of health system factors where care quality is optimal. We investigated the degree that modifiable health system factors are associated with receipt of treatment and treatment intent in stage III NSCLC in a large, universal health system.

To conduct an international survey of radiation oncologists treating primary renal cell carcinoma (RCC) with SABR to ascertain the general patterns of SABR use, common dose/treatment/follow-up details, and expected outcomes.

As the treatment for cancer improves and advances are made, the clinical focus is often on treatment response and survival. However, these are not the only factors which are important to patients. More patients are living longer after cancer treatment and therefore it is important that we can describe not only the treatment to patients but also what their life will be like during and after treatment. Patient reported outcomes (PROs) allow us to describe these. Although there are a range of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) available to the clinician to assess these, the use of them in many areas of brachytherapy lags behind ideal levels. Brachytherapy has many features that differ to external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) yet the assessment of quality of life during and after treatment is much more scarce than EBRT. Brachytherapy is often used in the setting of organ preservation or in place of radical surgery, yet there is a paucity of quality of life data comparing the different treatment modalities. This review article will aim to elaborate on the evidence that exists in the use of specific PROMs within prostate, breast and gynaecologic cancers and describe the development of a novel PROMs approach in rectal brachytherapy which aims to identify and resolve symptoms at an early stage.

Colorectal cancer patients with ≤10 unresectable metastases were treated with single-fraction sub-ablative radiotherapy in addition to standard of care systemic therapy in a single-arm, open-label, multicenter, pilot study (SIRIUS) to assess feasibility and safety. Results indicate that radiotherapy combined with systemic therapy is feasible and safe in this population.