An Analysis of Cancer Center-Provided Rideshare Utilization for Radiation Therapy.

Objectives: The potential of rideshare services to facilitate timely radiation therapy (RT), especially for resource-limited patients, is understudied.

Methods: Patients (n = 63) who received 73 courses of RT (1,513 fractions) and utilized free hospital-provided rideshare service (537 rides) were included in this retrospective study. A multidimensional analysis was conducted including a comparison of demographic, disease characteristics, and treatment completion data; a revenue analysis to evaluate the financial impact of rideshare services; and a geospatial analysis to evaluate community-level characteristics of patients.

Hypofractionated radiation leads to more rapid bleeding cessation in women with vaginal bleeding secondary to gynecologic malignancy.

Background: Vaginal bleeding (VB) is common in women with gynecologic (GYN) malignancies. Radiation therapy (RT) is used for the definitive treatment of GYN cancers and palliation of bleeding. The historical dogma is that high dose-per-fraction radiation leads to more rapid bleeding cessation, yet there is scant data supporting this claim.

Durable Metastatic Melanoma Remission Following Pembrolizumab and Radiotherapy: A Case Report of Prophylactic Immunosuppression in a Patient with Myasthenia Gravis and Immune-Mediated Colitis.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and radiotherapy (RT) combinations for various metastatic cancers are increasingly utilized, yet the augmentation of anti-cancer immunity including distant tumor responses by RT remains ill-characterized. Immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments and defective anti-tumor immune activation including immune-related adverse events (irAEs) likely limit dramatic immuno-radiotherapy combinations, though it remains unclear which immune characteristics mediate dramatic systemic tumor regression in only a small subset of patients. Moreover, the efficacy of ICI treatment in patients receiving immunosuppressive therapies for autoimmune conditions or irAEs is convoluted, yet clinically valuable.

Thyroid-optimized and thyroid-sparing radiotherapy in oral cavity and oropharyngeal carcinoma: A dosimetric study.

Background: Radiation-induced hypothyroidism is a common toxicity of head and neck radiation. Our re-planning study aimed to reduce thyroid dose while maintaining target coverage with IMRT.

Methods: We retrospectively identified patients with oral-cavity (n = 5) and oropharyngeal cancer (n = 5).

Greater neurobehavioral deficits occur in adult mice after repeated, as compared to single, mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) accounts for the majority of all brain injuries and affected individuals typically experience some extent of cognitive and/or neuropsychiatric deficits. Given that repeated mTBIs often result in worsened prognosis, the cumulative effect of repeated mTBIs is an area of clinical concern and on-going pre-clinical research. Animal models are critical in elucidating the underlying mechanisms of single and repeated mTBI-associated deficits, but the neurobehavioral sequelae produced by these models have not been well characterized.