Dose escalation is now the standard of care for the treatment of prostate cancer with radiation therapy. However, the rectum tends to be the dose-limiting structure when treating prostate cancer, given its close proximity. Early and late toxicities can occur when the rectum receives large doses of radiation therapy. New technologies allow for prevention of these toxicities. In this review, we e...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The aim was to evaluate the impact of a spacer gel on the dose distribution, applying three-dimensional conformal (3D CRT) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) planning techniques. MATERIAL AND METHODS The injection of a spacer gel (10 ml SpaceOAR™) was performed between the prostate and rectum under transrectal ultrasound guidance in 18 patients with prostate ca...

background: best dose distribution in target volume and control of organ at risk (oar) dose are the two main goals in brachytherapy. materials and methods: in this study in vivo dosimetry in 4 rectal points was performed by transillumination dosimeter (tld) s and the measured doses were compared in different patients. one point was reported to have the maximum dose in each patient and the very ...

A 55-year-oldman presentedwith a 4-day history of rectal pain, urgency, and a feeling of heaviness. He had also noticed thinning of the caliber of his stool. His past history included stage II, T2–3, muscle invasive urothelial bladder carcinoma, diagnosed 10 months previously, for which he had received neoadjuvant chemotherapy before undergoing radical cystoprostatectomy, pelvic lymphadenectomy...

PURPOSE To evaluate dosimetric variations of planning target volume (PTV) on critical organs such as rectal wall, bladder and femoral head, when the patient size changes due to weight loss in prostate volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). METHODS Three patients with small (32.0 cm3 ), medium (48.4 cm3 ) and large (86.5 cm3 ) prostate, selected from a group of 30 were planned for prostate V...

INTRODUCTION Rectal polypectomy causes thinning (or even perforation) of the rectal wall in addition to thermic injury at the polypectomy site. CASE REPORT We present a rare case of spontaneous rectal perforation after uncomplicated nerve sparing endoscopic extraperitoneal radical prostatectomy in a patient with a previous history of rectal polypectomy at the perforation site. The patient cou...

The majority of current models utilized for predicting toxicity in prostate cancer radiotherapy are based on dose-volume histograms. One of their main drawbacks is the lack of spatial accuracy, since they consider the organs as a whole volume and thus ignore the heterogeneous intra-organ radio-sensitivity. In this paper, we propose a dose-image-based framework to reveal the relationships betwee...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of assessing bladder and rectal point doses, using orthogonal radiographs without treatment planning, for vaginal cylinder applicator (VC), high-dose-rate (HDR) vaginal cuff brachytherapy (BT) after hysterectomy. Thirty-three VC HDR BT treatment plans from 31 postop- erative endometrial cancer patients were retrospectively analyzed. Sing...

Extraction and reconstruction of rectal wall structures from an ultrasound image is helpful for surgeons in rectal clinical diagnosis and 3-D reconstruction of rectal structures from ultrasound images. The primary task is to extract the boundary of the muscular layers on the rectal wall. However, due to the low SNR from ultrasound imaging and the thin muscular layer structure of the rectum, thi...

We evaluated the potential utility of hydrogels for delivery of the photosensitizing agents 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and hematoporphyrin monomethyl ether (HMME) to rectal tumors. Hydrogel suppositories containing ALA or HMME were administered to the rectal cavity of BALB/c mice bearing subcutaneous tumors of SW837 rectal carcinoma cells. For comparison, ALA and HMME were also administered by...