When discussing local treatment modalities, physicians often quip that there can be no blind surgeons, suggesting that an inherent advantage to surgery is the ability to precisely visualize the target. Advances in radiation therapy (RT) technology over the years have significantly improved the radiation oncologists’ abilities to precisely sculpt high-dose radiation to a variety of targets, simu...

In September 1987 an accident occurred with a cesium chloride (CsCl) teletherapy source taken from a cancer therapy institute in Goiânia, Brazil. Misuse of the abandoned source caused widespread contamination of radioactive material (about 50 TBq of Cs) in the town of Goiânia. Decontamination of affected areas did lead to about 3,500 m of solid radioactive wastes, which were disposed in two nea...

INTRODUCTION Radiation therapy (RT) is a major treatment modality, and the central nervous system is a dose-limiting organ in clinical RT. This experimental study aims to present the evaluation of the neuroprotective effects of erythropoietin (EPO) against oxidant injury following brain irradiation in rats. MATERIAL AND METHODS Forty Wistar rats were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 10 e...

Aim: To compare the effect of two RT schedules for thoracic palliation in advanced NSCLC patients (30 Gy 10 fractions over weeks and 27 6 three weeks, 2 per week) on pulmonary symptoms, radiological response primary tumour, functions acute toxicities. Material method: A hospital based quantitative prospective follow-up study. Total 104 were randomized into fractionation arms. Evaluation was don...

Introduction: Long-term teletherapy program is not suitable for old and working patients and those living in areas where little access to primary health care is available. Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is an appropriate alternative for these patients due to its limited number of fractions. The AccuBoost is a system for delivering APBI. Th...

A new approach for pulse labelling of plants using the short-lived positron emitting radioisotope carbon-11 (halflife: 20.4 min) as 11 CO 2 is reported together with its application to measuring [ 11 C]isoprene emissions from intact leaves capturing information associated with: (1) rate of emission; (2) the relative contribution of recently fixed carbon to isoprene biosynthesis; and (3) the tra...

This paper presents a model for the characterization and selection of beeswaxes for use as base substitute tissue for the manufacture of objects suitable for external radiotherapy using megavoltage photon beams. The model of characterization was divided into three distinct stages: 1) verification of aspects related to the origin of the beeswax, the bee species, the flora in the vicinity of the ...

The electrophoretic determination of RNA size by Northern blot analysis is an important procedure that has required to date the use of radiolabelled cDNA and cRNA probes. Here, we describe a new method which allows the size of an mRNA to be visualized by use of oligonucleotide probes directly labelled with alkaline phosphatase (AP). One advantage compared to radiolabelled probes is that AP-labe...