Many Breast Cancer Surgery Patients Do Not Receive Shorter, Less Costly Radiation Treatment

JAMA: Although the use of a type of radiation treatment that is shorter in duration and less costly has increased among women with early-stage breast cancer who had breast conserving surgery, most patients who meet guidelines to receive this treatment do not, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

UPMC CancerCenter First in World to Treat Patient with New Cyberknife MLC that Shapes Radiation to Tumor, Decreases Treatment Time

UPMC CancerCenter last week became the first center in the world to treat a patient with the CyberKnife® M6™ System’s new multileaf collimator, which enables precise shaping of radiation beams to any irregularly shaped tumor, sparing healthy surrounding tissues and reducing the time patients must undergo treatments.

Improved survival for patients with brain metastases less than 50 years old and receive stereotactic radiosurgery alone, without whole brain radiation therapy

ASTRO. US: Cancer patients with limited brain metastases (one to four tumors) who are ≤50 years old should receive stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) without whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), according to a study available online, open-access, and published in the March 15, 2015 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). For patients ≤50 years old who received SRS alone, survival was improved by 13 percentage points when compared to those patients ≤50 who received both SRS and WBRT.  

New therapy for effective treatment of tumours

Maastricht University. Netherlands: Researchers at the Maastricht UMC+ and the Maastro Clinic have provided evidence that combining radiotherapy and a new kind of immunotherapy is an effective way of fighting cancer cells. Experiments have shown that using both therapies in combination causes 75 percent of the treated tumours to disappear. The Maastricht research team will shortly be starting a clinical study so that this new treatment can eventually be used on patients. The results of the study have been published in the medical journal Clinical Cancer Research.