“This study was important because it reassures a patient with prostate cancer that the methods that are available at his local hospital may, in many cases, be as good as those that are currently only available in a limited number of centers,” said Anthony L. Zietman, M.D., a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and a radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 218,890 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2007. One in six men will get prostate cancer in his lifetime; however, only one in 35 men will die from the disease due in part to the wide variety of treatment options available. The Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Radiation Oncology and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, jointly conducted the study to determine the comparative dosimetric benefits and drawbacks of IMRT versus 3D-CPT as treatments for patients with prostate cancer and to determine whether specific cases should be assigned to one treatment method over the other. The study sought to identify the sites in which proton therapy offers an advantage over IMRT; IMRT is a readily available form of treatment, but proton therapy is only available at five treatment centers in the United States.
Ten patients with clinically-localized early-stage prostate cancer were randomly selected for the study and treated with both IMRT and 3D-CPT. The percentage of bladder volumes receiving more than 70 Gy/CGE was reduced by an average of 34 percent when using IMRT versus 3D-CPT, but the rectal volumes were found to be equivalent.
The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, Inc. 8280 Willow Oaks Corporate Drive Suite 500 Fairfax VA 22031 phone 703-502-1550 fax 703-502-7852
Beth Bukata | EurekAlert!
New study from the University of Halle: How climate change alters plant growth
12.01.2018 | Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Disarray in the brain
18.12.2017 | Universität zu Lübeck
On the way to an intelligent laboratory, physicists from Innsbruck and Vienna present an artificial agent that autonomously designs quantum experiments. In initial experiments, the system has independently (re)discovered experimental techniques that are nowadays standard in modern quantum optical laboratories. This shows how machines could play a more creative role in research in the future.
We carry smartphones in our pockets, the streets are dotted with semi-autonomous cars, but in the research laboratory experiments are still being designed by...
What enables electrons to be transferred swiftly, for example during photosynthesis? An interdisciplinary team of researchers has worked out the details of how...
For the first time, scientists have precisely measured the effective electrical charge of a single molecule in solution. This fundamental insight of an SNSF Professor could also pave the way for future medical diagnostics.
Electrical charge is one of the key properties that allows molecules to interact. Life itself depends on this phenomenon: many biological processes involve...
At the JEC World Composite Show in Paris in March 2018, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will be focusing on the latest trends and innovations in laser machining of composites. Among other things, researchers at the booth shared with the Aachen Center for Integrative Lightweight Production (AZL) will demonstrate how lasers can be used for joining, structuring, cutting and drilling composite materials.
No other industry has attracted as much public attention to composite materials as the automotive industry, which along with the aerospace industry is a driver...
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Tohoku University have developed high-quality GFO epitaxial films and systematically investigated their ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. They also demonstrated the room-temperature magnetocapacitance effects of these GFO thin films.
Multiferroic materials show magnetically driven ferroelectricity. They are attracting increasing attention because of their fascinating properties such as...
08.01.2018 | Event News
11.12.2017 | Event News
08.12.2017 | Event News
19.01.2018 | Materials Sciences
19.01.2018 | Health and Medicine
19.01.2018 | Physics and Astronomy