In Europe, short-term radiotherapy is increasingly used in the primary management of rectal cancer. In the United States, postoperative chemoradiotherapy is the standard treatment of choice. The rationale and indications for radiotherapy and possible combinations with chemotherapy are discussed and an overview of all of the randomised trials containing radiotherapy as one randomisation arm is g...

Strong expression of carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX), hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), ezrin and glucose transporter-1 (GLUT-1) were previously shown to be interrelated and to affect clinicopathological prognostic factors. In the current study, operative samples from 178 rectal cancer patients, 77 treated with short-course, 47 with long-course preoperative radiotherapy (RT), and 54 with no p...

BACKGROUND Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy does not alter anal sphincter preservation or postoperative complications compared with short-course radiotherapy alone in patients with clinical stage T3 or T4 resectable rectal cancer. The aim of this study was to compare survival, local control and late toxicity in the two treatment groups. METHODS The study randomized 312 patients to receive either...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to quantify volume changes in the gross target volume (GTV) during preoperative radiotherapy for extremity soft tissue sarcomas (ESTS). METHODS Twenty-seven patients with ESTS, treated with preoperative radiotherapy, were included in this study. Weekly cone-beam CT scans acquired for setup correction were used for GTV delineation in order to quantify v...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE An exon 2 G4C14-->A4T14 polymorphism in the p73 gene was shown to be related to survival in several types of cancers, including colorectal cancer. The purpose was to investigate if this polymorphism was related to survival in rectal cancer patients with or without preoperative radiotherapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS DNA extracted from tissue of 138 rectal cancer patients th...

OBJECTIVE To report the complication rate from planned, posttreatment neck dissections in patients who show control of primary squamous cell carcinoma by chemotherapy and radiotherapy or radiotherapy alone. DESIGN Retrospective review of case series. SETTING Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. PATIENTS Thirty-four patients with clinically positive neck disease treated wi...

To assess whether preoperative chemo-radiotherapy enhances the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in patients with colorectal cancer, we investigated in vivo and in vitro the interactions between chemo-radiotherapy and the expression of VEGF, and their possible impact on distant metastasis. Cellular cytotoxicity in the colon cancer cell lines, LoVo, SW480 and Caco2, was det...

OBJECTIVE To determine the effects of conservative neck dissections (NDs) and preoperative radiotherapy on the quantitative recovery of lymph nodes from the neck. DESIGN Retrospective review of case series. Data were obtained for age, preoperative TNM staging, type of ND, preoperative radiotherapy, total nodal yield (tNY), and positive nodal yield (pNY). The tNY and pNY were analyzed with fac...

Objective: To analyze the survival time and functional outcome of patients with thoracic metastatic spinal cord compression (MSCC) after operation and to identify parameters influencing the postoperative survival time. Methods: Sixty-seven consecutive patients with thoracic MSCC who were performed with posterior decompression and spine stabilization from January 2010 to December 2014 were retro...