The plight of childhood cancers for families.

Chicago, said her center has been doing Iort with an Intrabeam for nearly a year and has treated about 50 patients so far. “We don’t have a strict protocol,” she said, “but we tend to use it on women in their 60s who have relatively small, invasive [ductal] cancers.” “Patients love it,” said hansen. But it’s frustrating for those who find out later, from the final pathology report, that they have a positive node or involved margins. In such cases the patient undergoes WBI, and the Iort is treated as a boost. memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center has its own Iort protocol using a high-dose-rate afterloader that technicians wheel into a special shielded operating room. Beryl mcCormick, m.D., chief of external-beam radiotherapy, said the center has 60 patients in a phase I/II feasibility study. Although the study has completed enrollment, she said, the center continues to offer the technology to older women with low-risk breast cancer. “But we do only a few cases a year,” she said, because getting time in the operating room is so difficult.