Annual Meeting of the American Radium Society (ARS)

Due to the rarity of primary melanoma of the spinal cord, there are no standardized guidelines for treatment. Presentation during pregnancy adds more complexity.

Here, we report superior local control with treatment of tumors that have smaller planning target volumes. Five-fraction SBRT offers quick and effective treatment with acceptable toxicity and minimal delay in delivery of systemic therapy.

In addition to treating the tumors, radioembolization is a safe procedure with a predictable effect on contralateral liver hypertrophy. At 3 months post-radioembolization, degree of hypertrophy is significant, achieving the necessary threshold for safe liver resection.

Although CA 19-9 does not appear to have large prognostic implications in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer who receive induction chemotherapy followed by SBRT, it is suggested to have predictive ability.

IMRT use in a community hospital is equally as efficacious and minimally toxic as it is in leading academic institutions. Age at diagnosis was the only significant predictor of survival, suggesting that cancer-specific mortality is minimal after IMRT in localized prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer patients with penile prostheses who had pre-existing urologic problems (incontinence, penile pain, pelvic pain) and/or prior insertion of artificial urinary sphincters were more likely to experience urologic issues during RT until the 1-month follow-up.

Bilateral giant renal angiomyolipomas associated with tuberous sclerosis represent a challenge in their treatment, especially if nephrectomy is used to treat one side.

Overall, inversely optimized low-dose-rate prostate seed implantation, resulting in reduced needle and source exposure, demonstrates excellent, durable biochemical progression–free survival with modest grade 2 GU and very low GI toxicity in selected low-risk and favorable intermediate-risk patients.

In this large population-based cohort, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy is associated with improved OS in patients with stage III endometrial cancer.

In this cohort of older women with node-positive vulvar cancer, adjuvant RT is associated with improved OS, though overall outcomes are poor. More reliable delivery of quality RT may further improve survival in this population.

Intensity-modulated radiation therapy with simultaneous integrated boost to PET-positive nodes is well tolerated and provides good local control and OS in node-positive cervical cancer patients.

Postoperative RT with or without systemic therapy was associated with acceptable disease-related outcomes at 1 year. Outcomes of patients managed with systemic therapy plus RT may be attributable to selection bias, since patients with more advanced disease receive systemic therapy.

Multifield optimization intensity-modulated proton therapy planning for parotid cancers reduces low-dose radiation volumes and significantly reduces spinal cord, brainstem, contralateral parotid, and oral cavity dose.

The use of brachytherapy improves survival in oral cavity tumors treated with definitive radiation therapy.

While IMRT is the standard technique for most head cancers and offers excellent sparing of normal tissues to avoid late effects, BolusECT is appropriate for superficial targets, with good sparing of mucosal tissue to reduce acute mucositis that impairs nutrition, quality of life, and treatment intensity.

Ablative radiotherapy with stereotactic radiosurgery or fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy was effective in treating gynecologic brain metastasis, with excellent local control.

Despite better performance status noted for patients treated with stereotactic radiosurgery for first brain metastatic event compared with second brain metastatic event, no difference in survival was noted.

In this initial experience of melanoma brain metastases treated with BRAF and MEK inhibition with stereotactic radiosurgery, we find that the two modalities can be combined safely. These outcomes should be assessed further in prospective evaluations.

SBRT is a very well-tolerated form of RT that appears to offer a statistically significant and high level of pain control for bone metastases from prostate cancer. In community practice, a highly variable fractionation scheme is also noted.

Acute toxicity is common after SBRT for orbital tumors but is short-lived and mild. Chronic toxicity will be reported with further follow-up.

While our results do not demonstrate high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio to be an independent risk factor for worsened clinical outcomes, they do show high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio to have statistically and clinically significant predictive value for RFS and OS in patients with recently diagnosed soft tissue sarcoma.

Cancer patients with the highest risk of index and nonindex cancer death and medical comorbidity death are identified; certain patient groups may be targeted with interventions.

Both surgery and radiation are very well tolerated treatment regimens with limited and manageable toxicity in favorable patients. Outcomes in patients with peripheral nerve sheath tumors < 5 cm are promising.

Our results demonstrate that there is a measurable T2 relaxation time constant change in retroperitoneal sarcoma after 28 Gy.

Four articles reported five deaths due to esophageal toxicity; so, our dose escalation began cautiously, and as a result, no grade ≥ 3 esophageal toxicity occurred in our series.

Tumor growth factor inhibitors may cause more toxicity with SBRT than would otherwise be anticipated, although the absence of complications in our patients allows cautious optimism.

Such a platform technology will allow a point-of-care assay to be set up for the prediction of normal tissue toxicity after RT and ultimately for the monitoring of any intracellular protein assay diagnostic method.

Bolus electron conformal radiation therapy for the postoperative treatment of superficial soft tissue tumors resulted in favorable tumor control outcomes and limited radiation-related toxicity.

In our small cohorts, no significant difference was seen in toxicity-related treatment breaks between IMRT and three-dimensional conformal RT.

Re-irradiation to the head and neck with IMRT can allow for high radiation doses to be administered with limited severe toxicity and improved local control.