Arjun Sahgal, MD, of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, discusses results of the first phase III trial to suggest that dose escalation with stereotactic body radiotherapy may be superior to conventional palliative radiotherapy in improving pain outcomes for patients with spinal bone metastases (Abstract LBA2).
Justin Oh, MD, of the University of British Columbia, discusses results from the ASCENDE-RT trial, which compared a low-dose–rate brachytherapy boost to a dose-escalated external-beam boost for patients with high- and intermediate-risk prostate cancers (Abstract 127).
Juliane Hörner-Rieber, MD, of Heidelberg University Hospital, discusses phase III results of the MINT trial, which showed that conventionally fractionated intensity-modulated radiotherapy with a simultaneous integrated boost was noninferior to three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy followed by a sequential boost for both local control and cosmesis in patients with breast cancer (Abstract 19).
Cynthia Menard, MD, of the University of Montreal, discusses a study on the use of prostate-specific membrane antigen PET and CT to guide treatment. The scans led to high rates of new lesion detection and therefore intensification of radiotherapy for patients with prostate cancer, without an increase in side effects (Abstract 34).
Alphonse G. Taghian, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, reviews the 10-year follow-up of a dose-escalation trial studying accelerated partial-breast irradiation and discusses the optimal dose, adverse effects, and cosmetic outcomes (Abstract 25).
Jing Li, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase III results showing the use of stereotactic radiosurgery in patients with 4 to 15 brain metastases, compared with whole-brain radiotherapy, may better preserve cognitive function and minimize the interruption of systemic therapy without compromising overall survival (Abstract 41).
