When contouring pelvic lymph nodes in rectal and anal carcinoma, do you exclude bowel from your CTV?

Certainly, the expected clinical difference is so small that I personally think we will never have data to tell us whether one strategy is better than the other. Another point to consider is that unless your bowel constraints are very strict, your planning process is going to allow a considerable am...

Normally, there is no small bowel in spaces usually occupied by the mesorectal compartment. Occasionally, however, you can have a patient with a loop of small bowel in the pouch of Douglas. If imaging studies show small bowel where you would normally contour your CTV, the most important thing to do ...

I tend to exclude from CTV contours, and just because I had followed the GYN atlas and did not change practice based on the anorectal guidelines. One would presume that the CTV was the same in both cases. It does make some sense that because bowel is mobile that it probably should be in the CTV. Wit...