Quality assurance in LDR and HDR prostate brachytherapy

Funded Activity Summary

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in men over 55 years of age. Approximately 30% of all diagnosed cancers in this age group are prostate carcinomas. Low and high dose rate brachytherapy are newly established treatment options for early-stage, low-risk, prostate cancer and are an alternative to curative prostatectomy in most patients. Local control and cure of prostate cancer is greatly influenced by the dose distribution generated by both the treatment techniques. Treatment plans must be able to deliver a prescribed dose in the tumour, with adequate margins, while minimising the dose delivered to the surrounding normal tissue and critical organs. It is well recognised that, however skilful the radiation oncologist, an ideal dose distribution according to a treatment plan plan does not guarantee a well delivered dose. Complications such as impotence, severe radiation urethritis and severe rectal bleeding will arise if overdosing of the neuro-vascular bundle, urethra and rectum occurs respectively. This project is based on newly developed instrumentation that will allow continuous, realtime, in vivo, monitoring of the radiation dose levels in the urethra and rectum during brachytherapy treatment of prostate cancer. Such monitoring of the treatment procedure, has been identified as a high priority by the American Brachytherapy Society. The technique will allow extensive in vivo and post treatment studies to be performed by clinicians so as to measure the dose levels currently received and identify the optimum acceptable dose levels for future procedures. The outcomes of this project may well be able to be utilised in other forms of brachytherapy treament (e.g. breast, cervical cancer) and other radiation treatment modailities (e.g. conventional radiotherapy and intensity modulated radiotherapy) to also reduce complications associated with these treatment modalities.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2005

End Date: 01-01-2007

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $221,500.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Radiation Therapy

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Improvement of clinical outcomes by reducing complications | On line and in vivo dosimetry for LDR and HDR brachytherapy | On line dosimetry using mini-detectors | Prostate cancer | Prostate cancer treatment by LDR and HDR brachytherapy | Rectal radiation toxicity | Urethral radiation toxicity | proctitis | quantify urethral and rectal toxicity | urethritis

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