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).
Youssef Zeidan, MD, PhD, of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, discusses study findings showing that breast-conserving surgery, whole-breast irradiation, and trastuzumab offer effective local tumor control for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer. An additional radiation boost does not seem to further improve outcomes (Abstract 52).
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).
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).
Neha Vapiwala, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, who served as a discussant for LBA1, summarizes her review of this study of patients with prostate cancer who had biochemical recurrence in the post-prostatectomy setting, who were candidates for salvage radiotherapy, and who received either conventional imaging or PET scans to help determine the course of treatment.
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).
