ESTRO38 Congress Report

Introduction RTT track

The Scientific Advisory Group evaluated the abstracts accepted for the RTT track at the ESTRO 38 conference. The number of papers submitted continues to increase annually with 162 abstracts from 33 countries submitted in 2019. As in previous year abstracts on a range of topics were submitted from countries outside Europe.

The RTT Scientific Advisory Group selected the following three submitted to the RTT strand: The first abstract byWebster et al presented very interesting research. It is the first international multicentre trial assessing whether RTTs selected the optimum from the plan of a day using the example of radical bladder radiotherapy. The results were based on 439 CBCT scans obtained from 19 Centers where plan selection by RTTs was based on guidelines vs nonguideline compliant cases. A QA programme was revised and preparations are underway for a stage II study. The second research paper was submitted by Rianne de Jong et al and focused on IGART (Image Guided Adaptive Radiotherapy). Researchers analysed target coverage and dose to the organs at risk for the clinically used adaptive plan selection strategy compared to a nonadaptive approach for both short (5x5Gy) and long (25x2Gy) treatment schedules for rectal cancer patients. The third paper selected was from Duffton et al and addressed the use of MRI to determine threshold changes in ADC that determine responders from non-responders to radiotherapy. Images were acquired before the first fraction and repeated before the 11th fraction. Prospective analysis focussed on an imaging study of patients with intermediate and high risk, locally advanced SCC oropharynx during RT and chemo-radiotherapy. Twenty patients were recruited and the research’ described a method of creating a ROI for repeated assessment of volume change and ADC within

BARTOSZ BĄK

Themain trend was topics related to adaptive radiotherapy. Personalisation of treatment plans, dose reduction and the best/quickest possible adaptation of treatment has been themain theme of the congress for several years. Again, this year many scientific papers on the topics mentioned above were submitted, focusing on the control and compensation systems for intra and inter-fraction organ motion. MR linac and proton therapy research was also popular. There weremany reports on themethods of immobilisation, verification and adaptation of treatment, and the RTT responsibility in clinical workflow. Some papers described new approaches in respiratory control systems using VR systems with virtual reality and hypnosis as stress management strategies already showing encouraging results in other medical fields. ESTRO 38 Pre-meeting Course This year the pre-meeting course was dedicated to RTTs, dosimetrists and RT nurses workingin brachytherapy. In order to achieve a uniform level of knowledge, this course was designed to provide basic information on the principles of treatment in brachytherapy. There were presentations from a range of units across Europe with RTTs discussing their working practices. This was an interactive day in which participants shared their experiences. ESTRO 38 Debate The topic of the debate this year was “Workload/clinic logistics, and not technical uncertainties, are themain barrier to widespread implementation of adaptive RT practice”. In this session, we considered different perspectives of adapting a radiation therapy treatment for each individual patient, together with the associated implications for specialist RTT education and new organisation paradigms. How could adaptive radiotherapy practice be effectively implemented in our departments, what are the challenges and how can they be addressed? RTTs Michael Velec fromCanada and Elizabeth Forde from Ireland, were the specialists who addressed the concerns, answered questions and discussed how to promote change in our departments. ESTRO 38 highly scored papers The highest scored papers focusedmainly on topics related tomotionmanagement and adaptive strategies, patient care, side effects and communication, imaging acquisition and registration, OAR and target definition and improving accuracy in patient positioning.

a clinical study. Bartosz Bąk Chair, SAG RTT

Congress report | RTT

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