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Ane Appelt: How do we talk about reirradiation

Ane Appelt/avl.nl

Oct 23, 2024, 14:49

Ane Appelt: How do we talk about reirradiation

Ane Appelt, Associate Professor in Radiotherapy Physics at University of Leeds, shared a post on X, about recent paper published in Radiotherapy and Oncology:

Consistency in reirradiation scenarios: Terminology, tissue recovery in calculations, units and reporting.

Authors: Nick West, Elizabeth Covington, Eliana Vasquez Osorio, Joep Stroom, Michael Duchateau, Madalyne Day, Nick Hardcastle, Myriam Ayadi, Andrew Jackson, Heidi S. Ronde, Chuck Mayo, Ane Appelt.

Ane Appelt

”How do we talk about (and report) reirradiation? There has been quite a lot of variation in the literature, including basic spelling! We agreed on a set of standard nomenclature and terminology in the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology Radiation Physics reirradiation working group.

A few highlights:

It’s ‘reirradiation’ (or ‘reRT’) – no hyphens here, please.
It’s ‘recovery,’ not ‘repair,’ when we discuss long-term effects.
Use ‘equieffective dose’ to describe the rescaled dose to account for radiobiological effects (e.g., correction for fractionation effects).
Bentzen et al 2012 provides a good framework for how to talk about equieffective dose, using the ‘EQDXGy(α/β)’ terminology.
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine Task Group 263 describes how to report specific dose metrics, and we extend it to reirradiation-specific reporting.

Ane Appelt

There is a lot of confusion around ‘recovery factors,’ ‘dose rescaling factors,’ ‘dose remaining,’ etc.
We propose to use Tissue Recovery Factor (TRF) and Dose Scaling Factor (DSF): DSF = 1 – TRF.

Nick West did the hard work getting us all aligned in the Physics reirradiation working group (not an easy task!). And Charles Mayo and Elizabeth Covington ensured that we’re aligned with Task Group-263. Thank you all!”

American Association of Physicists in Medicine Andrew Jackson Ane Appelt cancer Charles Mayo Chuck Mayo Dose Scaling Factor Eliana Vasquez Osorio Elizabeth Covington ESTRO European SocieTy for Radiotherapy and Oncology Heidi S. Rønde Joep Stroom Madalyne Day Michael Duchateau Myriam Ayadi Nick Hardcastle Nick West OncoDaily Oncology Radiotherapy and Oncology reirradiation Tissue Recovery Factor University of Leeds

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