ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S5777

RTT - Education, training, advanced practice and role developments

ESTRO 2024

Elizabeth Richardson, Eve McAtavey, Rita Simoes

UCLH, PBT, London, United Kingdom

Purpose/Objective:

Radiotherapy to treat soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities (STSE) improves local control rates, however STSE survivors often develop significant toxicities, which impact quality of life. Past clinical trials reported grade 2+ subcutaneous fibrosis (48.2% vs 31.5%), lymphoedema (23.2% vs 15.5%), bone fractures (11% vs 5%) and joint stiffness (23.2% vs 17.8%) associated with RT.1

Optimisation of RT plans for soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities (STSE) has been traditionally done for avoiding high doses in the weight-bearing bones and medium to low doses in the normal tissue (NT) limb corridor.

However, the NT limb corridor is not anatomically defined. It has been described in literature as a cylinder that is a minimum of 2cm wide and extends 2cm above and below the PTV. Simoes and colleagues have defined anatomical NT guidelines to improve STSE plan optimisation and potentially improve side-effect toxicity outcomes.2

Contouring of normal tissue structures in STSE requires additional anatomy training that most RTTs won’t possess. This work is aiming to assess the base level of limb contouring skills and training preferences of RTTs.

Material/Methods:

A questionnaire was developed to assess the training needs and the skills required for NT structures outlining for limb STSE. This was created as a google form which was sent out to the 10 RTTs either currently, previously or due to be involved in sarcoma contouring. This is a novel training approach, and there was no pre-existing training in outlining as to benchmark this approach against. The questions are detailed below and were made to ensure that contouring training needs align to an optimal level with the necessary skills.