With improvements in adjuvant therapies and decline in age-standardized cancer mortality, bony metastases are increasingly prevalent in the cancer population. A variety of strategies are being developed to assist in palliative care of patients with symptomatic cancer spread to bone. Researchers at the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital and the Sunnybrook and Women’s College ...

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) presents an interesting challenge in radiation oncology. Improved systemic therapy has significantly prolonged survival. Modern imaging has allowed practitioners to effectively identify patients with oligometastatic disease. Conventionally fractionated radiation therapy is a first-line treatment option for palliation of bone metastases, including the spine, but has li...

Orbital metastasis is a rare occurrence found only in about 3 - 10% of all prostate cancers. A 72 years male presented with proptosis of the left eye associated with pain, blurred vision and frequent headaches for the past 8 months. Past medical history had symptoms of bladder outflow obstruction for 3 years. MRI brain and orbit with contrast was consistent with a large soft tissue mass in the ...

Introduction: The ability to track the location of the ultrasound transducer is of utmost significance in various new Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) applications such as in pain palliation of bone metastases and prostate tumor treatment. The ultrasound transducer is generally monitored using a micro-RF coil setup shown in Figure 1. The tracking of micro RF-coils was first...

BACKGROUND: Pain, dyspnea, and anorexia are common symptoms experienced by patients with cancer and often are poorly managed. METHODS: The incidence and causes of these symptoms are described, as well as factors that exacerbate or ameliorate their impact. RESULTS: Pharmacologic management of cancer pain is based on the use of a sequential "ladder" that incorporates nonopioid, opioid, and adjuva...

Systemic therapy using bone-seeking radiopharmaceuticals has clear advantages for the treatment of multisite metastatic pain. Evidence supporting the use of beta-particle, electron, and alpha-particle-emitting radiopharmaceuticals is reviewed here. Appropriate patient selection relies on correlating clinical symptoms with focal abnormalities on conventional bone scintigraphy. Time to symptom re...

Introduction: Various bone palliative therapeutic agents have been developed and widely used for bone metastasis such as Sm-EDTMP. In this study, production, quality control and biodistribution studies of a newly developed therapeutic compound have been presented followed by imaging studies in wild-type rodents. Methods: Sm-TTHMP was prepared starting from Sm-SmCl3, prepared by neutron activati...

  Chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis (CRMO) is a rare aseptic, auto-inflammatory bone disorder. CRMO presents with bone pain with or without fever. The diagnosis of CRMO is a diagnosis of exclusion and should be included in the differential diagnosis of chronic inflammatory bone lesions in children. Cultures of the bone are typically sterile, antibiotic therapy does not result in clinic...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the pain-alleviating action, feasibility and efficacy of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for palliation of inoperable pancreatic cancer in humans. METHODS Forty patients with advanced pancreatic cancer were treated with HIFU. There were 13 patients with stage III, and 27 patients with stage IV disease. The locations of the tumours were as follows: head of pancre...