Shielding implications on secondary radiation doses in prostate cancer treatment.

Shielding implications on secondary radiation doses in prostate cancer treatment. Appl Radiat Isot. 2020 Sep;163:109163 Authors: Medeiros MPC, Silva AX, Rebello WF, Santos RFG, Stenders RM, Braz D, Braga KL, Thalhofer JL, Berdeguez MBT, Andrade ER Abstract Medical linear accelerators (linacs) require a physical structure designed to provide adequate structural support which ensures the safety of patients, operators and the general public. During a radiotherapy session, healthy tissues are exposed to radiation, even with these safety guarantees. This unwanted exposure may increase the likelihood of developing secondary cancer. This work uses the MCNP-5 code to computationally simulate a conformational 3D radiotherapy protocol for prostate cancer. Also, it investigates the potential effects of radiotherapy room shielding composition on equivalent and effective doses in the patient's body. A computational model of an actual room was developed considering a Varian Trilogy linac operating at 10 MeV. This model enabled dose calculations for an anthropomorphic phantom called REX to be performed. This phantom has sufficient details of all relevant organs and tissues needed to estimate the effective dose of the patient. The treatment protocol modeled in this study came from the database of patients treated by the Brazilian National Cancer Institute (Inca). For this protocol, the total dose to be applied to the patient is equally distributed o...
Source: Applied Radiation and Isotopes - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Appl Radiat Isot Source Type: research