Radiation Oncology
Expert insights on radiation treatment planning, techniques, toxicity management, and multimodal cancer care.
Recent Discussions
How do you manage new brain metastases in patients on trastuzumab emtansine (TDM-1) who has controlled extracranial disease?
This is an increasingly common clinical scenario, because systemic control with antibodies is quite good, but HER2+ disease still has a strong predilection for the brain. There is a third treatment option here, which may have lower toxicity than either whole brain or SRS.Particularly where larger vo...
What dose constraint do you use for the spinal cord in the setting of re-irradiation?
Dr. Arjun Sahgal published the dose constraints in Red J.Reirradiation human spinal cord tolerance for stereotactic body radiotherapy.Sahgal A, Ma L, Weinberg V, Gibbs IC, Chao S, Chang UK, Werner-Wasik M, Angelov L, Chang EL, Sohn MJ, Soltys SG, Létourneau D, Ryu S, Gerszten PC, Fowler J, Wong CS,...
In a thin patient with anal cancer, do you use bolus over the inguinal nodal volume when treating with an IMRT technique?
Rarely, only if the tumor is involving the skin, but I always sue 6MV photons and more than enough dose. The skin gets plenty of dose with IMRT and 6MV photons. When there is gross node in a thin patient, it doesn't add morbidity to do so, however. The only inguinal recurrence I have ever had, gross...
How would you re-irradiate a breast recurrence in a patient treated with prior whole breast radiotherapy?
In setting where the patient is refusing surgery and systemic therapy, I would evaluate if there are local symptoms. If not, one can consider not offering RT until symptomatic. Alternatives: 1. If post-mastectomy, or superficial recurrence can consider hyperthermia and smaller field. Alternatively, ...
At what point do you refer patients to see a pain specialist?
Great question. In these instances, where the patient comes in for palliative RT for painful bone mets, for example, I tend refer back to the 'involved' palliative care professional or the pain specialist. In the last few years, I have rarely had to become involved with directly prescribing opiates...
Is it safe to start immunotherapy concurrently with radiation to a bone metastases?
Retrospective data for palliative RT and immunotherapy doesn’t suggest increased complications with concurrent use
Would you consider hypofractionated weekly whole breast irradiation for early stage breast cancer?
A word of warning to those who are still "struggling" with the concept of modest, daily HFRT for post-menopausal, biologically-favorable early-stage breast cancer, your mind is about to be blown...FAST! "Once a week??!! Where did this come from??!" is a question I've heard not a few people asking ov...
Do you request lumpectomy cavity markers to be placed at time of surgery to guide planning?
I worked with a surgeon who was hot to trot on using the Biozorb. However, I noted that it did not always fill and contour the cavity appropriately so ultimately, I felt it truly did not help and it is expensive. I prefer the old fashioned 6-8 clips to outline the cavity in 3D. The clips were also v...
Should patients who received pelvic radiation get colonoscopy screenings more often than what is recommended for the general population?
The excess risk of secondary cancer after radiation has been estimated at 0.5% in a 15 year follow-up period. This relatively low incidence would not justify a higher interval of screening colonoscopy after pelvic radiation. As a component of our patient-reported quality of life survey, we do screen...
Would you consider APBI in a patient <50 years of age?
I do consider these patients for partial breast irradiation, discussing with them that there may not be large numbers of patients treated in this cohort however. It is also important to note that these patients are eligible based1) ABS Guidelines- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/290740882) ASBS ...