Status of head and neck brachytherapy in Spain in 2022.

Purpose: Brachytherapy (BT) has been used for many years for disease control in tumours of the head and neck area (H&N). It is currently performed with high dose rate (HDR) or pulsed dose rate (PDR), but its use has been reduced due to the implementation of new non-invasive external beam radiotherapy techniques such as intensity modulation (IMRT) and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) and the improvement of surgical techniques.

Methods: The Spanish Brachytherapy Group (GEB) has carried out a survey to find out the number of centres in Spain that continue to use BT in H&N and its indications and expectations for the future.

Review on Treatment Planning Systems for Cervix Brachytherapy (Interventional Radiotherapy): Some Desirable and Convenient Practical Aspects to Be Implemented from Radiation Oncologist and Medical Physics Perspectives.

Intracavitary brachytherapy (BT, Interventional Radiotherapy, IRT), plays an essential role in the curative intent of locally advanced cervical cancer, for which the conventional approach involves external beam radiotherapy with concurrent chemotherapy followed by BT. This work aims to review the different methodologies used by commercially available treatment planning systems (TPSs) in exclusive magnetic resonance imaging-based (MRI) cervix BT with interstitial component treatments. Practical aspects and improvements to be implemented into the TPSs are discussed.

Evaluation of the impact of EMBRACE II protocol in Spanish centers, with a large cohort of patients using a ranking index.

Purpose: The aim of this paper was to assess development of high-dose-rate (HDR) cervix brachytherapy (BT) implants in three Spanish institutions before and after introduction of EMBRACE II protocol.

Material And Methods: 392 patients from three different institutions, treated between 2009 and 2019 were analyzed. D of high-risk clinical target volume (HR-CTV) and D of organs at risk (OARs) of all patients were collected.

Dosimetry and prescription in liver radioembolization with Y microspheres: 3D calculation of tumor-to-liver ratio from global Tc-MAA SPECT information.

Dosimetry in liver radioembolization with Y microspheres is a fundamental tool, both for the optimization of each treatment and for improving knowledge of the treatment effects in the tissues. Different options are available for estimating the administered activity and the tumor/organ dose, among them the so-called partition method. The key factor in the partition method is the tumor/normal tissue activity uptake ratio (T/N), which is obtained by a single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan during a pre-treatment simulation.