The U.K. Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) has issued guidelines on reirradiation, a highly individualized treatment that is being increasingly used for selected patients.
Experts in reirradiation treatment have highlighted some considerations prior to reirradiation that are common across all anatomical sites. These include appropriate selection of patients, the need for appropriate investigations prior to reirradiation, an approach to account for the previous dose delivered, consideration of the original radiotherapy dose distribution, the reirradiation dose and dose constraints, and choice of radiotherapy technique.
The aim of this document is to provide general principles on clinical considerations for medical imaging professionals contemplating reirradiation, the RCR notes. It provides links to tumour-site-specific guidance where available.
RCR has also published new guidelines for volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) or intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in anal cancer. This provides detailed, practical, and evidence-based consensus guidance for treating patients receiving these radiotherapies for anal cancer, according to the RCR.
The guidance formed the basis of the PersonaLising Anal cancer radioTherapy dOse (PLATO) trial. The RCR said it anticipates that as the trial results are published, the guidance will be updated.
These two new documents can be downloaded free of charge from: https://www.rcr.ac.uk/our-services/all-our-publications/clinical-oncology-publications/
