Hydrogel rectum-prostate spacers mitigate the uncertainties in proton relative biological effectiveness associated with anterior-oblique beams.

CONCLUSION: Typically, rectal spacers enabled the generation of anterior beam proton plans that appeared robust to modeled variation in RBE. However, further analysis of day-to-day robustness would be required prior to a clinical implementation of AO proton beams. Such beams offer almost complete femoral head sparing, but their broader value relative to IMRT and SB protons remains unclear.
PMID: 28075206 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Acta Oncologica - January 10, 2017 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Underwood TS, Voog JC, Moteabbed M, Tang S, Soffen E, Cahlon O, Lu HM, Zietman AL, Efstathiou JA, Paganetti H Tags: Acta Oncol Source Type: research