Publications by authors named "D Rijkaart"

Objective: To determine the incidence of clinical and subclinical venous thromboembolic events (VTE) in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) treated with high-dose thromboprophylaxis during definitive chemoradiation and brachytherapy.

Methods: A prospective observational study was undertaken from August 2021 to December 2023 in patients with primary LACC treated with definitive chemoradiation in two Dutch tertiary hospitals. Patients received high-dose thromboprophylaxis during chemoradiation and brachytherapy.

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Background: The aim of the present study was to report the 5-year axillary recurrence-free interval (aRFI) in clinically node-positive breast cancer patients treated according to a de-escalating axillary treatment protocol after neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST).

Methods: All patients diagnosed in two hospitals between October 2014 and March 2021 were identified retrospectively. Data on diagnostic workup, treatment and follow-up was collected.

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Article Synopsis
  • Deep learning models for auto-segmentation in radiotherapy were evaluated for their effectiveness in segmenting cancerous areas, focusing on both quantitative and qualitative measures.
  • The study involved training separate models for left- and right-sided breast cancer, measuring the time taken for automatic and manual segmentation, and comparing them using several scoring techniques.
  • Results showed significant time savings with auto-segmentation—averaging about 42% to 58% reduction in time—while maintaining high accuracy, as 92% of automatically generated contours were deemed clinically acceptable.
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Purpose: Intra-operative radiotherapy (IORT) has been used as a tool to provide a high-dose radiation boost to a limited volume of patients with fixed tumors with a likelihood of microscopically involved resection margins, in order to improve local control. Two main techniques to deliver IORT include high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy, termed 'intra-operative brachytherapy' (IOBT), and electrons, termed 'intra-operative electron radiotherapy' (IOERT), both having very different dose distributions. A recent paper described an improved local recurrence-free survival favoring IOBT over IOERT for patients with locally advanced or recurrent rectal cancer and microscopically irradical resections.

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Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) shows great potential to streamline the treatment planning process. However, its clinical adoption is slow due to the limited number of clinical evaluation studies and because often, the translation of the predicted dose distribution to a deliverable plan is lacking. This study evaluates two different, deliverable AI plans in terms of their clinical acceptability based on quantitative parameters and qualitative evaluation by four radiation oncologists.

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