ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S5714

RTT - Patient experience and quality of life

ESTRO 2024

2685

Digital Poster

Towards gantry-less particle therapy: Motion Sickness in a fully-enclosed patient-rotation-system

Cedric Beyer 1,2 , Stefan Dorsch 1,2,3 , Gernot Echner 3,2 , Fabian Dinkel 3,2 , Katharina Maria Paul 1,2 , Katharina Seidensaal 1,2 , Sebastian Klüter 1,2 1 Heidelberg University Hospital, Department of Radiation Oncology, Heidleberg, Germany. 2 Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Tumor diseases (NCT), Heidelberg, Germany. 3 German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, Heidelberg, Germany

Purpose/Objective:

To operate particle therapy with minimal restrictions and to irradiate from different angles, usually large gantry structures are necessary. As a cost-effective and space-saving alternative, concepts where the patient instead of the beam is rotated have been proposed (1,2). This provides setups with static beam exits with possibilities similar to gantries. The compatibility of rotation systems for patients is a topic to which special attention should be attributed. Because of the rotation, here, motion sickness is particularly important. In this work we investigated the general feasibility of a fully-enclosed patient rotation system (PRS) and the different states of motion sickness. For this, the PRS was placed within a 70 cm MRI bore.

Material/Methods:

The used patient-rotation-system consists of a polymethyl methacrylate cylinder (length: 2250 mm, inner diameter: 500 mm) on a wooden base. The cylinder can be manually rotated, either with a geared handle or fully manual. A subject can be immobilized between several vacuum mats which enwrap the body of the subject, except their head and neck region. A study with 50 adult volunteer participants without oncological question was conducted: The first 20 received only a simulated magnetic resonance (MR)-imaging examination with only MR sounds, but yet fully immobilized in the PRS (in the months March - May). For 30 of them, a magnetic resonance imaging examination was performed (in the months January - April) on a 1.5 T MRI (Siemens Healthineers, Germany). The subjects were rotated to different angles for simulation (0°, 45°, 90°, 180°) and imaging (0°, 70°, 90°, 110°) and rested in this position for the duration of the image acquisition/playtime of the equivalent MR sounds (10 min. per angle). After every rotation the motion sickness was assessed with a modified Motion Sickness Assessment Questionnaire (MSAQ) after Gianaros et al. (3). One modification contains an exclusion of all sopite syndrome related questions. Also, the scale for the individual items was whole-number increments between 0 (no symptom) and 20 (extreme symptom intensity). The motion sickness scores was calculated as Gianaros et al. (3) showed (0% = no motion sickness to 100% = maximal motion sickness). Volunteers without symptoms of motion sickness were not included in the calculations of motion sickness. The symptoms of motion sickness was categorised in the three subgroups (i) gastrointestinal symptoms, (ii) central symptoms and (iii) peripheral symptoms of motion sickness. Further, anxiety (using a 6-item State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory (STAI-6)) and areas of discomfort (qualitatively and without a dedicated questionnaire) were assessed.

Results:

Except for the partly reported immobilization discomfort, the feedback of the subjects was positive. Only (6%) of the subjects aborted the procedure prematurely, two due to discomfort one due to motion sickness. Some degree