The effect of radiation therapy in the treatment of adult soft tissue sarcomas of the extremities: a long-term community-based cancer center experience.

The aim of the study was to determine the effect of external beam radiotherapy (RT) in the treatment of extremity soft tissue sarcoma (STS) before or after limb-sparing surgery (LSS) in a community-based setting. Patients presenting to our institution from 1992 to 2010 and meeting eligibility criteria were stratified into low (G1) or high (G2, G3) pathologic grade and evaluated. Major complication events, including amputation, radiation-induced sarcoma, and pathologic fracture, were assessed.

Effect of Polyether Ether Ketone on Therapeutic Radiation to the Spine: A Pilot Study.

Study Design: Cadaveric model.

Objectives: To compare the effect of PEEK versus conventional implants on scatter radiation to a simulated tumor bed in the spine SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA.: Given the highly vasculature nature of the spine, it is the most common place for bony metastases.

Optimal Timing of Surgical Resection After Radiation in Locally Advanced Rectal Adenocarcinoma: An Analysis of the National Cancer Database.

Background: In the treatment of rectal cancer, a longer radiation-surgery interval from the end of neoadjuvant radiation therapy to surgery has been associated with higher rates of complete pathologic response (pCR), but the optimal interval with respect to survival has not been established. Data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) was used to evaluate the impact of radiation-surgery interval on oncologic outcomes.

Methods: The NCDB was searched for patients diagnosed with nonmetastatic rectal cancer who underwent preoperative radiation followed by radical surgical resection.

Evaluation of clinical margins via simulation of patient setup errors in prostate IMRT treatment plans.

This work evaluates: (i) the size of random and systematic setup errors that can be absorbed by 5 mm clinical target volume (CTV) to planning target volume (PTV) margins in prostate intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT); (ii) agreement between simulation results and published margin recipes; and (iii) whether shifting contours with respect to a static dose distribution accurately predicts dose coverage due to setup errors. In 27 IMRT treatment plans created with 5 mm CTV-to-PTV margins, random setup errors with standard deviations (SDs) of 1.5, 3, 5 and 10 mm were simulated by fluence convolution.

A dynamic compensation strategy to correct patient-positioning errors in conformal prostate radiotherapy.

Traditionally, pretreatment detected patient-positioning errors have been corrected by repositioning the couch to align the patient to the treatment beam. We investigated an alternative strategy: aligning the beam to the patient by repositioning the dynamic multileaf collimator and adjusting the beam weights, termed dynamic compensation. The purpose of this study was to determine the geometric range of positioning errors for which the dynamic compensation method is valid in prostate cancer patients treated with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy.