[Radiotherapy regulatory news in France in 2024: Issues of quality and safety of care].

With numerous clinical, technological or strategic innovations, radiation therapy is constantly evolving, contributing to major quality and safety issues, in a context where new regulatory standards are required. In this article, we will describe the conditions for implementing and applying the requirements for accreditation, periodic certification and peer audit in France.

Combined intra-cavitary and interstitial image-guided adaptative brachytherapy for cervical stump carcinomas: technical and clinical results of six patients.

Purpose: According to European guidelines for cervix cancers, the management of cervical stump cancers should follow recommendations for patients without previous sub-total hysterectomy, but may require adaptation of radiotherapy modalities, especially brachytherapy (BT). However, data with modern BT technics are very scarce.

Material And Methods: From May 2013 to March 2020, 6 patients (age range, 71-88 years) with cervical stump squamous cell carcinoma (previously treated by sub-total hysterectomy) have been treated with external beam radiotherapy (intensity-modulated radiation therapy - IMRT, 45 Gy in 25 fractions, 5 patients, or 50.

Efficacy of Surgical Excision and Brachytherapy in the Treatment of Keloids: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Objective: To demonstrate the efficacy of a protocol combining surgical excision and high-dose-rate brachytherapy for treatment of keloids.

Methods: The authors performed a unicentric retrospective cohort study between 2013 and 2018. The minimum follow-up was 12 months.

Prostate brachytherapy under hypnosedation: A prospective evaluation.

Purpose: Hypnosedation (HS) for brachytherapy has been proposed in patients with prostate cancer and has been evaluated.

Materials And Methods: 79 patients were treated with brachytherapy under HS. The Visual Analog Scale questionnaire was used to assess comfort and anxiety and the lowest, mean, and highest level of pain.

Pathologic Response, When Increased by Longer Interval, Is a Marker but Not the Cause of Good Prognosis in Rectal Cancer: 17-year Follow-up of the Lyon R90-01 Randomized Trial.

Purpose: The Lyon R90-01 randomized trial investigated whether the interval between preoperative radiation therapy and surgery influenced rectal cancer outcome. Long-term results are reported here after a median follow-up of 17 years.

Methods And Materials: Between February 1991 and December 1995, 210 patients from 29 French centers were randomly assigned (ratio of 1:1) to groups that waited either 2 weeks (short interval [SI]) or 6 to 8 weeks (long interval [LI]) between neoadjuvant radiation therapy and surgery.

Preoperative radiotherapy in elderly patients with rectal cancer.

Purpose: We performed a retrospective analysis in order to evaluate the compliance with preoperative radiotherapy in patients aged>or=70 with locally advanced resectable rectal cancer, and to evaluate the influence of comorbidities on treatment tolerance and oncological results.

Methods: From March 1984 to December 2000, 95 patients with T3-T4 N0 M0 rectal cancer received a preoperative radiotherapy in 2 radiotherapy departments. Nineteen patients received concomitant chemotherapy.

Tumor volume as outcome determinant in patients treated with chemoradiation for locally advanced esophageal cancer.

Objective: The currently used tumor-node metastasis (TNM) staging method is generally not applicable to patients with unresectable esophageal carcinomas. There is a need for both an efficient, easy-to-perform clinical classification and for identification of pretherapeutic prognostic factors that would be useful for oncologists, one of which is tumor volume.

Methods: Records of 148 patients, admitted to hospital during the period January 1993 to December 2001, were evaluated retrospectively.

[Place of neoadjuvant treatments in oesophageal cancers care].

Esophageal cancer has a poor prognosis. Recent epidemiological data has shown a modification of histologic types, as adenocarcinoma represents more than 50% of all patients newly diagnosed. Despite progress of surgery, overall survival at 5 years is still about 20% for resectable tumors, supporting the need for additional therapies.

Combining cisplatin and mitomycin with radiotherapy in anal carcinoma.

Purpose: The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) phase II study No. 22953 demonstrated the feasibility of reducing the overall treatment time of chemoradiation, delivering mitomycin C twice rather than once and fluorouracil during the whole treatment. We tested the feasibility of chemoradiation in anal carcinoma with mitomycin and cisplatin in a phase II study.

[Induction chemotherapy in patients with head and neck cancer].

Neoadjuvant chemotherapies for patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma have been widely studied for twenty years. Despite a high level of activity on the primary tumor, no study has demonstrated a survival benefit suggesting the use of neoadjvant chemotherapy. One can consider that the only benefit of such strategy is for larynx preservation in patients with operable hypopharnx or larynx cancer.

[Locoregional recurrent rectal cancer: the place of radiotherapy].

Currently, locoregional recurrence of rectal cancer is rare due to the therapeutic progress of total mesorectal excision and pre-operative radiotherapy. Nevertheless, a curative treatment could be proposed provided that surgical removal is possible and complete. Here, we will discuss the position of both external and intra-operative radiotherapy, and concomitant chemotherapy.