Reporting small bowel dose in cervix cancer high-dose-rate brachytherapy.

Small bowel (SB) is an organ at risk (OAR) that may potentially develop toxicity after radiotherapy for cervix cancer. However, its dose from brachytherapy (BT) is not systematically reported as in other OARs, even with image-guided brachytherapy (IGBT). This study aims to introduce consideration of quantified objectives for SB in BT plan optimization and to evaluate the feasibility of sparing SB while maintaining adequate target coverage.

Efficacy and Tolerability of Palliative Split-Course Thoracic Chemoradiotherapy for Symptomatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Introduction: To assess the efficacy and tolerability of palliative split-course concurrent thoracic chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in patients with incurable locally advanced and metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

Methods: All patients with incurable non-small cell lung cancer and symptomatic thoracic disease treated with palliative split-course CRT between March 2006 and February 2013 at a single institution were included in this retrospective study. The primary endpoint was improvement in presenting thoracic symptoms.

Patterns-of-failure after helical tomotherapy-based chemoradiotherapy for head and neck cancer: implications for CTV margin, elective nodal dose and bilateral parotid sparing.

Objectives: There is debate about the optimal clinical target volume (CTV) expansion and prophylactic nodal dose (PND) in head and neck IMRT. We evaluated our patterns-of-failure (POF) after helical tomotherapy-based concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) to assess the oncologic safety of reducing the CTV, PND, and bilateral parotid sparing (BPS).

Materials And Methods: All patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck treated with curative intent CCRT between January 2007 and April 2013 at a single institution were included in this retrospective study.

Normal tissue complication probability modeling of acute hematologic toxicity in cervical cancer patients treated with chemoradiotherapy.

Purpose: To test the hypothesis that increased pelvic bone marrow (BM) irradiation is associated with increased hematologic toxicity (HT) in cervical cancer patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy and to develop a normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) model for HT.

Methods And Materials: We tested associations between hematologic nadirs during chemoradiotherapy and the volume of BM receiving≥10 and 20 Gy (V10 and V20) using a previously developed linear regression model. The validation cohort consisted of 44 cervical cancer patients treated with concurrent cisplatin and pelvic radiotherapy.

Predictors of competing mortality in advanced head and neck cancer.

PURPOSE Death from noncancer causes (competing mortality) is an important event in head and neck cancer, but studies identifying predictors of this event are lacking. We sought to identify predictors of competing mortality and develop a risk stratification model for competing events. PATIENTS AND METHODS Cohort study of 479 patients with stage III to IV carcinoma of the head and neck diagnosed between August 1993 and November 2004.