Publications by authors named "M J Smits"

Background: For patients with small-size colorectal liver metastases, growing evidence suggests thermal ablation to be associated with fewer adverse events and faster recovery than resection while also challenging resection in terms of local control and overall survival. This study assessed the potential non-inferiority of thermal ablation compared with surgical resection in patients with small-size resectable colorectal liver metastases.

Methods: Adult patients (aged ≥18 years) from 14 centres in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy with ten or fewer small-size (≤3 cm) colorectal liver metastases, no extrahepatic metastases, and an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0-2, were stratified per centre, and according to their disease burden, into low, intermediate, and high disease burden subgroups and randomly assigned 1:1 to receive either thermal ablation (experimental group) or surgical resection (control group) of all target colorectal liver metastases using the web-based module Castor electronic data capture with variable block sizes of 4, 6, and 8.

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Background: To study the feasibility of hepatobiliary scintigraphy (HBS) to improve selection and planning of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated with holmium-166 (Ho)-microspheres radioembolization.

Results: Thirty-one patients with HCC were included and treated with Ho- radioembolization as part of a prospective phase 2 study. Twenty-seven patients were eligible for analysis, 67% had a cirrhotic liver morphology on imaging, 70% had multifocal disease and 51% had bilobar disease.

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In same-day radioembolization, 99mTc-MAA SPECT/CT, 90Y radioembolization, and post-treatment 90Y SPECT/CT procedures are conducted on the same-day, resulting in a dual-isotope environment of 90Y and 99mTc during post-treatment imaging. This study aimed to quantify the impact of 99mTc on 90Y bremsstrahlung-SPECT/CT image quality and to establish an optimised imaging protocol for both clinical practice, and with advanced reconstruction techniques. Utilising a NEMA IQ phantom, contrast recovery coefficients (CRCs) were measured to evaluate the 90Y image quality degradation caused by 99mTc.

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