Publications by authors named "Crijns A"

Peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCL) comprise a heterogeneous group of mature T-cell neoplasms with an unfavorable prognosis; presentation with stage I(E) disease is uncommon. In clinical practice, an abbreviated chemotherapy treatment regimen combined with radiotherapy (combined modality treatment [CMT]) is commonly used, although evidence from clinical trials is lacking. The aim of this nationwide population-based cohort study is to describe first-line treatment and outcome of patients with stage I(E) PTCL.

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Purpose: To provide more insight into late treatment-related toxicities among breast cancer (BC) survivors by comparing morbidities and risk factors between BC survivors and age-matched controls.

Materials And Methods: All female participants diagnosed with BC before inclusion in Lifelines, a population-based cohort in the Netherlands, were selected and matched 1:4 to female controls without any oncological history on birth year. Baseline was defined as the age at BC diagnosis.

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Radiation-Induced CardioVascular Disease (RICVD) is an important concern in thoracic radiotherapy with complex underlying pathophysiology. Recently, we proposed DNA methylation as a possible mechanism contributing to RICVD. The current study investigates DNA methylation in heart-irradiated rats and radiotherapy-treated breast cancer (BC) patients.

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Purpose: To assess sinoatrial node (SAN) and atrioventricular node (AVN) doses for breast cancer (BC) patients treated with 3D-CRT and evaluate whether "large" cardiac structures (whole heart and four cardiac chambers) would be relevant surrogates.

Material And Methods: This single center study was based on 116 BCE patients (56 left-sided, 60 right-sided) treated with 3D-CRT without respiratory gating strategies and few IMN irradiations from 2009 to 2013. The heart, the left and right ventricles (LV, RV), the left and right atria (LA, RA) were contoured using multi-atlases for auto-segmentation.

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Background And Purpose: We aimed to the genetic components and susceptibility variants associated with acute radiation-induced toxicities (RITs) in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC).

Materials And Methods: We performed the largest meta-GWAS of seven European cohorts (n = 4,042). Patients were scored weekly during radiotherapy for acute RITs including dysphagia, mucositis, and xerostomia.

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Article Synopsis
  • Some studies say that radiation therapy for breast cancer might cause heart problems, but the details about how much radiation affects different heart parts weren't deeply explored.
  • Researchers looked at breast cancer patients in a study to see if radiation caused heart issues, comparing patients with and without heart problems.
  • They found 116 patients, but the results didn't show a clear link between radiation dose and heart issues, though more right-sided breast cancer patients had heart problems compared to those without.
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Background: In the case of breast cancer (BC), radiotherapy (RT) helps reduce locoregional recurrence and BC-related deaths but can lead to cardiotoxicity, resulting in an increased risk of long-term major cardiovascular events. It is therefore of primary importance to early detect subclinical left ventricular (LV) dysfunction in BC patients after RT and to determine the dose-response relationships between cardiac doses and these events.

Methods: Within the frame of the MEDIRAD European project (2017-2022), the prospective multicenter EARLY-HEART study (ClinicalTrials.

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Purpose: Acute coronary events (ACEs) are considered the most important side effect of radiation therapy (RT) for breast cancer, but underlying mechanisms still have to be identified. Process-oriented models mathematically describe the development of disease and provide a link between mechanisms and subsequent risk. Here, this link is exploited to learn about the underlying mechanisms from the observed age-time patterns of ACE risk.

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Cardiac structure contouring is a time consuming and tedious manual activity used for radiotherapeutic dose toxicity planning. We developed an automatic cardiac structure segmentation pipeline for use in low-dose non-contrast planning CT based on deep learning algorithms for small datasets. Fifty CT scans were retrospectively selected and the whole heart, ventricles and atria were contoured.

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Organs-at-risk contouring is time consuming and labour intensive. Automation by deep learning algorithms would decrease the workload of radiotherapists and technicians considerably. However, the variety of metrics used for the evaluation of deep learning algorithms make the results of many papers difficult to interpret and compare.

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Background: Most head and neck cancer (HNC) patients receive radiotherapy (RT) and develop toxicities. This genome-wide association study (GWAS) was designed to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with common acute radiation-induced toxicities (RITs) in an HNC cohort.

Methods: A two-stage GWAS was performed in 1279 HNC patients treated with RT and prospectively scored for mucositis, xerostomia, sticky saliva, and dysphagia.

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Background And Purpose: Developing NTCP-models for cardiac complications after breast cancer (BC) radiotherapy requires cardiac dose-volume parameters for many patients. These can be obtained by using multi-atlas based automatic segmentation (MABAS) of cardiac structures in planning CT scans. We investigated the relevance of separate multi-atlases for deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) and free breathing (FB) CT scans.

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Purpose: To evaluate and compare health-related quality of life (HRQL) of women with early-stage breast cancer (BC) treated with different radiotherapy (RT) regimens.

Methods: Data were collected from five prospective cohorts of BC patients treated with breast-conserving surgery and different RT regimens: intraoperative RT (IORT, 1 × 23.3 Gy; n = 267), external beam accelerated partial breast irradiation (EB-APBI, 10 × 3.

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Purpose: Radiation-induced acute coronary events (ACEs) may occur as a treatment-related late adverse effect of breast cancer (BC) radiation. However, the underlying mechanisms behind this radiation-induced cardiac disease remain to be determined. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that radiation dose to calcified atherosclerotic plaques in the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) is a better predictor for ACEs than radiation dose to the whole heart or left ventricle in patients with BC treated with radiation therapy.

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Purpose: Pencil beam scanned proton therapy (PBS-PT) treatment quality might be compromised by interplay and motion effects. Via fraction-wise reconstruction of 4D dose distributions and dose accumulation, we assess the clinical relevance of motion related target dose degradation in thoracic cancer patients.

Methods And Materials: For the ten thoracic patients (Hodgkin lymphoma and non-small cell lung cancer) treated at our proton therapy facility, daily breathing pattern records, treatment delivery log-files and weekly repeated 4DCTs were collected.

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Article Synopsis
  • Anthracyclines, a type of chemotherapy, are linked to a higher risk of heart failure in young breast cancer survivors, and this study aims to uncover the long-term prevalence of heart dysfunction in these patients.
  • Researchers assessed cardiac function in 569 women who had breast cancer treatment 5-12 years prior, focusing on measures like left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and global longitudinal strain (GLS), along with the NT-proBNP biomarker.
  • The findings revealed that those treated with anthracyclines showed significantly worse heart function markers compared to those who weren’t, indicating a need for ongoing monitoring of cardiac health in this population.
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This study describes the development and evaluation of an auto-segmentation tool for the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD), on non-contrast planning computed tomography scans of breast cancer patients. The dosimetric parameters of the auto-segmented LAD contours are highly correlated with those of manual contours (R-values ≥0.89).

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Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that incidental cardiac irradiation is associated with changes in cardiac function in breast cancer (BC) survivors treated with radiation therapy (RT).

Methods And Materials: We conducted a cross-sectional study consisting of 109 BC survivors treated with RT between 2005 and 2011. The endpoint was cardiac function, assessed by echocardiography.

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Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and radiotherapy plays a major role in its treatment. However, breast cancer radiotherapy can lead to incidental irradiation of the heart, resulting in an increased risk for a variety of heart diseases arising many years after radiotherapy. Therefore, identifying breast cancer patients at the highest risk for radiation-induced cardiac complications is crucial for developing strategies for primary and secondary prevention, which may contribute to healthy aging.

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Background And Purpose: The main objective of this study was to test whether pre-treatment coronary artery calcium (CAC) was associated with the cumulative incidence of acute coronary events (ACE) among breast cancer (BC) patients treated with postoperative radiotherapy (RT).

Material And Methods: The study population consisted of 939 consecutive female BC patients treated with RT. The association between CAC and ACE was tested using Cox-proportional hazard models.

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Purpose A relationship between mean heart dose (MHD) and acute coronary event (ACE) rate was reported in a study of patients with breast cancer (BC). The main objective of our cohort study was to validate this relationship and investigate if other dose-distribution parameters are better predictors for ACEs than MHD. Patients and Methods The cohort consisted of 910 consecutive female patients with BC treated with radiotherapy (RT) after breast-conserving surgery.

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Background And Purpose: To develop a multivariable prediction model for the risk of grade⩾2 fibrosis in the boost area after breast conserving surgery (BCS) followed by three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (RT) with a simultaneous integrated photon boost (3D-CRT-SIB), five years after RT.

Material And Methods: This prospective cohort study included 1,030 patients treated with RT for breast cancer (stage 0-III), after BCS. Data regarding physician-rated fibrosis and dose-volume parameters were available in 546 patients.

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Ovarian cancer ranks the most lethal among gynecologic neoplasms in women. To develop potential biomarkers for diagnosis, we have identified five novel genes (CYP39A1, GTF2A1, FOXD4L4, EBP, and HAAO) that are hypermethylated in ovarian tumors, compared with the non-malignant normal ovarian surface epithelia, using the quantitative methylation-specific polymerase chain reactions. Interestingly enough, multivariate Cox regression analysis has identified hypermethylation of CYP39A1 correlated with an increase rate of relapsing (P=0.

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Background: P53, EGFR and HER-2/neu are the most frequently studied molecular biological parameters in epithelial ovarian cancer, but their prognostic impact is still unequivocal. We performed a meta-analysis to more precisely estimate their prognostic significance.

Methods: Published studies that investigated the association between p53, EGFR and HER-2/neu status and survival were identified.

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