One thousand cases of cobalt-based high dose rate brachytherapy treated at a tertiary care center: A retrospective study.

Purpose: This is a study of our experience with Co-60 high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR BT) from a tertiary care center.

Materials And Methods: One thousand patients were treated with Cobalt-based HDR BT for more than 6 years. The practice of BT was analyzed for clinical outcome, physical, radiobiological, and technical aspects.

Results: Among those 1000 patients, 906 (90.6%) patients had gynecologic cancer, 29 (2.9%) patients had intraluminal BT, 63 (6.3%) hadhead &neck (2.1%), keloid (2.1%) and mold BT (2.1%), and 2 (0.2%) had sarcoma. Dose rate decreased by 48.9%, and treatment time increased from 9.33 to 18.27 min over 5 years. No patients treatment was abandoned because of machine-related problems.

Conclusion: Cobalt-based HDR BT is preferable in terms of lesser source exchanges, relatively uniform treatment time, quality assurance requirement, and cost.