Primary cardiac sarcoma (PCS) is a rare malignancy, and intimal cardiac sarcoma is the rarest. The prognosis is poor with mean survival of 3–12 months even with complete radical resection. There has been no randomised controlled trial or standard guidelines for management of cardiac sarcomas. Treatment is extrapolated from case reports and series.

A 59-year-old male diagnosed with primary intimal cardiac sarcoma underwent wide local excision with positive margins. Adjuvant radiotherapy to a total dose of 60 Gray (Gy) was given with good tolerance.

Intimal cardiac sarcoma is rare. The risk of local recurrence is high, and efforts must be made to elucidate the role and usefulness of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in these tumours.

Oesophageal carcinoma is one of the fatal cancers mainly because of its rapid spread and poor prognosis. Treatment modalities involves a multimodality approach, including surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Radiation therapy includes brachytherapy in the form of intraluminal radiation therapy. Brachytherapy permits delivery of high tumouricidal doses to superficial cancerous growth of the oesophagus while delivering much lower doses to the surrounding tissue. It is mostly given in combination with external beam radiation in patients with poor performance scores not likely to tolerate an aggressive chemoradiation regimen or as a boost to concurrent chemoradiotherapy. It is very effective in terms of local tumour control as well as in relieving symptoms in advanced/recurrent disease. Intraoperative brachytherapy and seed brachytherapy have also been tried to address the nodal disease.

We undertook a review of the available literature and techniques developed in the past three decades to emphasise the role of brachytherapy in curative or palliative settings in the treatment of oesophageal carcinoma.

Oesophageal brachytherapy will remain a tangible treatment of oesophageal cancer, although it is less commonly used due to high expertise requirement, lack of established evidence, risk of life-threatening complications and lack of interest in brachytherapy. It offers quick and useful palliation for a prolonged period, along with good quality of life and superior dosimetry. Use of novel applicators may allow dose escalation and lower toxicity. Seed brachytherapy is also emerging as a promising option in nodal recurrences.

Partial breast irradiation (PBI) can reduce the volume of treatment and number of treatment sessions in low-risk breast cancer patients. Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) allows the administration of high doses per fraction thereby reducing the number of fractions and reducing the dose to the surrounding tissues. The objective of this study is to review the literature on the use of SBRT in PBI using the Cyberknife® (CK) unit.

In this review, we analysed the literature in PubMed and MEDLINE with articles published in the last 10 years. All citations were evaluated for relevant content and validity.

We include articles in the English language with information about PBI, SBRT in PBI, the use of the CK unit in PBI and other applications of SBRT in breast carcinoma. A total of 68 articles were found and 28 articles were selected for inclusion in this review.

The treatment of PBI using the CK unit has clear advantages in reducing the treatment volume, and therefore theoretically reducing side effects and good cosmetic results with adequate tumour control. However, the placement of fiducial markers is necessary, requiring an adequate learning curve for the placement of the markers and longer treatment times.

Conjunctival squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is a rare tumour of the ocular region and microscopic radical surgical is difficult. There are no single guidelines for therapeutic management and the role of radiation therapy is not clearly defined although conventionally photon or electron beams are used. Proton beam radiotherapy (PBRT) is a new option for a conservative approach and allows good sparing of the organs at risk.

After surgical resection, we collected 15 cases treated at our institution with PBRT. The dose delivered was between 48 and 60 Gy relative biological effectiveness (RBE), with fractions of 12–15 Gy RBE.

After an average period of 48 months, the patients achieved excellent disease control (overall survival and disease-free survival: 86·6%), with minimal acute and late toxicity.

In this work, we present our experience on the use of PBRT technique in SCC treatment. A larger sample of patients is needed to draw conclusions about the impact of this treatment on disease recurrence and overall survival.

Malignant spinal cord compression (MSCC) is a serious condition requiring urgent palliative radiotherapy to alleviate symptoms and avoid permanent paralysis. The aim of this project was to analyse the 30-day mortality rate post-palliative radiotherapy for MSCC patients to identify if radiotherapy can be safely omitted or the fractionation reduced in the poor prognosis group (patients likely to die within 30 days) by biomarkers and performance status (PS).

A retrospective audit was performed (July–December 2019) and data on treatment duration, date of death, biomarkers (C-reactive protein (CRP), albumin) and PS were collected using hospital patient management systems.

Hundred and one patients received palliative radiotherapy for MSCC in the 6-month period. The number of patients who died within 30 days was 17, representing 16·8% mortality rate. Rising CRP levels and poor PS indicated a poorer prognosis in this patient group.

Monitoring biomarkers and PS as standard throughout patients’ treatment is recommended to assess disease progression. Worsening PS and high CRP is an indicator of poor prognosis and early death, and therefore omission of treatment or a single fraction of radiotherapy is recommended.

Vaginal cancer is a rare malignancy that poses a challenge to treat and cure, as surgical excision requires life-changing procedures because of the proximity and involvement of rectum, bladder and anus. We report in this case study the successful delivery of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) for a patient with vaginal cancer after previous radiotherapy.

A 71-year-old white female who presented with dyspareunia and irritative urinary symptoms proven by biopsy was our candidate patient. Subsequent PET/CT revealed a hypermetabolic 3 cm lesion at the 12–1 o’clock position in the distal vagina involving the clitoris. The patient was initially treated with volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) with simultaneous integrated boost technique to the involved nodes, and later upon recurrence treated with SABR using 30 Gy in six fractions.

To our knowledge, this is the first report of a vaginal cylinder used to physically distance organs at risk from the treatment target and also as a localising device with image guidance for the delivery of SABR using an external beam.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and it is responsible for about 10% of all cancer mortality in Canadian men. The current ‘gold standard’ for the diagnosis of prostate cancer is a prostate biopsy and the decision on when to biopsy a patient with non-suspicious Digital Rectal Examination (DRE) result and total prostate specific antigen (tPSA) of 4–10 ng/ml can be challenging. In order to shift the treatment paradigm of prostate cancer toward more personalised and targeted therapy, there is the need for a clear system that makes its detection binary so as to decrease the rate of inaccurate detections. Therefore in recent years, there have been several investigations into the development of various biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity for screening, early detection and personalised patient-specific targeted medicine from diagnosis to treatment of the disease.

This paper reports on nine currently available clinical biomarkers used in screening for early detection and diagnosis, to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies, in risk assessment of aggressive disease and in monitoring treatment response of prostate cancer.

Current clinical prostate cancer biomarkers have the potential for a personalised risk assessment of aggressive disease and the risk of developing distant metastatic disease and have been proven to be useful tools to guide clinicians in personalised patient-specific targeted treatment and in the shared decision making between patients and their physicians regarding prostate biopsy and treatment. Using biomarkers to select patients with a significant probability of aggressive prostate cancer would potentially avoid premature death from the disease, while at the same time would safely preclude patients who do not require unnecessary invasive intervention.

To identify treatment outcome, dose uniformity, treatment time, toxicity among 3D conformal therapy (3D-CRT), intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) based on literature review.

A literature search was conducted using PubMed/MEDLINE, BMC—part of Springer Nature, Google Scholar and iMEDPub Ltd with the following keywords for filtering: 3D-CRT, IMRT, VMAT, lung cancer, local control and radiobiology. A total of 14 publications were finally selected for the comparison of 3D-CRT, IMRT and VMAT to determine which technique is superior or inferior among these three.

Compared to 3D-CRT, IMRT delivers more precise treatment, has better conformal dose coverage to planning target volume (PTV) that covers gross tumour with microscopic extension, respiratory tumour motion and setup margin. 3D-CRT has large number of limitations: low overall survival (OS), large toxicity, secondary malignancies.

It is difficult to choose the best technique for treating NSCLC due to patient conditions and technique availability. A high-precision treatment may improve tumour control probability (TCP) and patient’s quality of life. VMAT, whether superior or not, needs more clinical trials to treat NSCLC and requires longer dose optimisation time with the greatest benefit of rapid treatment delivery, improved patient comfort, reduced intrafraction motion and increased patient throughput compared to IMRT and 3D-CRT.

Pancreatic cancer is the 12th most commonly diagnosed cancer and the 3rd leading cause of cancer mortality and accounts for approximately 2·7% of all newly diagnosed cancer cases and 6·4% of all cancer mortalities in Canada. It has a very poor survival rate mainly due to the difficulty of detecting the disease at an early stage. Consequently, in the advancement of disease management towards the concept of precision medicine that takes individual patient variabilities into account, several investigators have focused on the identification of effective clinical biomarkers with high specificity and sensitivity, capable of early diagnosis of symptomatic patients and early detection of the disease in asymptomatic individuals at high risk for developing pancreatic cancer.

We searched several databases from August to December 2020 for relevant studies published in English between 2000 and 2020 and reporting on biomarkers for the management of pancreatic cancer. In this narrative review paper, we describe 13 clinical and emerging biomarkers for pancreatic cancers used in screening for early detection and diagnosis, to identify patients’ risk for metastatic disease and subsequent relapse, to monitor patient response to specific treatment and to provide clinicians the possibility of prospectively identifying groups of patients who will benefit from a particular treatment.

Current and emerging biomarkers for pancreatic cancer with high specificity and sensitivity has the potential to account for individual patient variabilities, for early detection of disease before the onset of metastasis to improve treatment outcome and patients’ survival, help screen high-risk populations, predict prognosis, provide accurate information of patient response to specific treatment and improve patients monitoring during treatment. Thus, the future holds promise for the use of effective clinical biomarkers or a panel of biomarkers for personalised patient-specific targeted medicine for pancreatic cancer.

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare and highly aggressive neuroendocrine malignancy typically involving the skin. The majority of MCC involves the head/neck region and the extremities. Despite the aggressive nature of the disease, there have been several case studies that report spontaneous regression. We report a unique case of spontaneous regression of an MCC in a peculiar region in the anterior mediastinum with no cutaneous involvement.

A 50-year-old man who presented with a mobile low anterior neck mass, proven by biopsy, to be MCC. Subsequent PET/CT confirmed an FDG (Flurodeoxyglucose)-avid upper mediastinal mass. The mass gradually regressed over the course of 1 month subsequent to biopsy and was no longer palpable on exam or visible on subsequent CT scans. The patient was treated with intensity modulated radiation therapy with a total dose of 6,160 cGy in 28 fractions to the site of previously visible primary disease. At-risk nodal basins were also treated. On subsequent follow-up, the patient continued to have no clinical or radiographic signs of disease.

Spontaneous regression of an MCC is rare but has been reported mostly in the head/neck region following biopsy. It is unknown why spontaneous regression occurs. There is a possibility that biopsy may stimulate T-lymphocytes resulting in spontaneous regression.

This is the first case to our knowledge of spontaneous regression of an MCC in the anterior mediastinum with no cutaneous involvement. Most MCC are seen clinically due to skin changes with a majority of cases occurring in the head/neck region.

An ever-growing number of patients with implantable cardiac rhythm devices are treated with radiation therapy for cancer and are therefore at risk of device failure. Several medical societies developed recommendations for the management of such patients.

We report the case of a 76-year-old patient with an implanted cardioverter defibrillator, treated with external radiotherapy for breast cancer, to test in practice the recommendations on the management of similar cases.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and the third leading cause of death among Canadian men. The standard treatment modalities for prostate cancer include prostatectomy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy and chemotherapy or any combination depending on the stage of the tumour. However, several studies have reported that tobacco smoking at the time of diagnosis and during treatment can potentially impact treatment efficacy, outcome and patients quality of life after treatment.

This narrative literature review elucidates the impacts of tobacco smoking on prostate cancer progression, treatment efficacy, including its effects on prostatectomy, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, risk of cancer recurrence and mortality and quality of life after treatment. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of integrating a smoking cessation programme into the treatment regimen for prostate cancer patients in order to yield more favourable treatment outcomes, reduce risk of recurrence and mortality and increase the quality of life after treatment for prostate cancer patients.

Smoking cessation is one of the most important interventions to prevent cancer and it is also essential after the diagnosis of prostate cancer to improve clinical outcomes. All prostate cancer patients should be advised to quit tobacco use since it can potentially improve treatment response rates and survival, as well as reduce the risk of developing treatment complications and potentially improve the quality of life after treatment. There are several benefits to smoking cessation and it should become an important component of the cancer care continuum in all oncology programmes, starting from prevention of cancer through diagnosis, treatment, survivorship and palliative care. Evidence-based smoking cessation intervention should be sustainably integrated into any comprehensive cancer programme, and the information should be targeted to the specific benefits of cessation in cancer patients.

Giant cell tumour of the tendon sheath (GCTTS) is the second most common tumour of the hand. Despite surgery, local recurrence after excision has been reported in up to 45% of cases. Post-operative radiotherapy (PORT) has been found to be promising in preventing these recurrences in high-risk group. One of the reservations of PORT is secondary effects of radiation which may cause a decreased range of motion of the affected joint, sensory changes and nail changes. Surface mould brachytherapy can provide a high dose to target volume with a rapid fall of dose to surrounding structures. Despite this, it is less used, the possible reason can be less technical proficiency.

We have technically illustrated surface mould brachytherapy in a case of GCTTS of the left index finger, and compared dosimetrically with more widely used conventional photon and electron external beam radiotherapy.

The 6-MV photon treatment plan with a bolus plan provided the least dose to skin (106%) and phalanges (103%). It has a Homogeneity index (1·06) closest to 1, whereas the Conformity index of all plans was similar. The dose coverage was adequate in all plans. The second-best plan dosimetrically was the surface mould brachytherapy.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and responsible for about 10% of all cancer mortality in both Canadian and American men. Currently, serum PSA level is the most commonly used test for the detection of prostate cancer, though the levels can also be elevated in benign conditions, has limited specificity and has a high rate of overdiagnosis and treatment of indolent disease. Consequently, in recent years, several investigations have been conducted to identify novel cancer biomarkers capable of both effective screening and diagnosis, as well as assisting to shift the diagnostic and treatment paradigm of prostate cancer towards more patient-specific and targeted medicine. The goal of this narrative review paper is to describe eleven novel and promising tissue-based biomarkers for prostate cancer capable to account for individual patient variabilities and have the potential for risk assessment, early detection and diagnosis, identification of patients who will benefit from a particular treatment and monitoring patient response to treatment.

We searched several databases from August to December 2020 for relevant studies published in English between 2000 and 2020 and reporting on tissue-based biomarkers for screening and early diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of prostate cancer.

Emerging prostate cancer biomarkers have the potential to guide clinical decision-making since they have the potential to detect the disease early, measure the risk of developing the disease and the risk of progression, provide accurate information of patient response to a specific treatment and are capable of informing clinicians about the likely outcome of a cancer diagnosis independent of the treatment received. Therefore, the future holds promise for personalised and targeted medicine from prevention to diagnosis and treatment that considers the individual patient’s variabilities in the management of prostate cancer.

Radiotherapy is an effective and significant mode of definitive cancer treatment with well-established local tumour control success, especially in the treatment of localised tumours. Although, for metastatic disease, the role of radiotherapy has generally been limited to palliation of symptoms. In the treatment of metastatic diseases settings, the radiation therapy technique has always been confronted with the challenge of the simultaneous treatment of all of the various distant metastatic tumour sites, however, some recent evidence suggests that radiotherapy can potentially induce anticancer immune responses whose effectors potentially migrate to distant metastatic tumours to provoke their regression in cancer patients. Thus, unirradiated distant metastatic tumour sites can exhibit a delayed therapeutic response termed the abscopal effect.

This paper reports on a review of the abscopal effect, including its biological mechanism, the effect of radiation dose and fractionation regime and the timing of immunotherapy administration on radiotherapy-induced abscopal effect, the enhancement of radiotherapy-induced abscopal effects with immunotherapy, the effect of the location of the irradiated tumour and the radiotherapy of multiple tumour sites on the likelihood and effectiveness of inducing abscopal responses in the preclinical and clinical settings and also reports on some evidence of clinical observations in patients.

Although abscopal effects of radiotherapy are still relatively rare in patients, it has gained a lot of interest due to recent development and use of immunotherapy strategies incorporating combinations of targeted immunomodulators and immune checkpoint blockade with radiation therapy. The enhancement of cancer immunotherapy could potentially enable the translation of the concept of abscopal effect into the clinics as a new strategy to induce therapeutically effective anti-tumour immune responses in cancer patients. The combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy has the potential to expand the role of radiotherapy from a purely local tumour control treatment to play a significant role in advanced and metastatic tumour control and this could likely lead to a paradigm shift in the treatment of patients with metastatic cancer.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a prevalent disease in Southern China. Radiation therapy remains the primary treatment modality for NPC due to its high radiation sensitivity. Conventional volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) can achieve excellent target volume coverage and superior conformal dose distributions while sparing organs at risk (OARs). However, VMAT may also produce substantial volume of low-dose region in the surrounding normal tissue. Our oncology centre has incorporated the concept of anterior cervical field with VMAT in clinical practice of NPC treatment planning. The purpose of this treatment-comparison case study is to demonstrate the lower neck OARs sparing ability of hybrid volumetric-modulated arc therapy (hybrid-VMAT) over conventional VMAT for NPC.

Four patients diagnosed with NPC of different clinical lymph node staging (N staging) were enrolled for this treatment-comparison case study. Planning target volumes and OARs were delineated with reference to Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0225/0615. Additional OARs from lower neck region, including thyroid, trachea, cervical spine and pharyngeal constrictor muscles (PCMs), were also delineated. Two treatment techniques, hybrid-VMAT and VMAT, were created for each patient’s dataset.

Both treatment techniques produced adequate target coverage and reduced radiation dose to the OARs as suggested in RTOG 0225/0615. Hybrid-VMAT plans achieved superior dose reduction in larynx, oesophagus, middle PCM, inferior PCM, cervical spine and trachea comparing with VMAT plans. Hence, the clinical usability and functional outcome of hybrid-VMAT should be further investigated for NPC radiation therapy.

The aim of this case report is to describe the clinical presentation and imaging features of a patient with optic nerve leukaemic infiltration as the first site of relapse after complete response to systemic treatment.

We report the case of a 23-year-old man with history of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in complete remission. Six months later, the ocular examination revealed decreased visual acuity. Fundus examination showed a pale optic disk with blurred margins and multiple flame-shaped and dot and blot retinal haemorrhages in his left eye. A diagnosis of leukaemic infiltration to the optic nerve was made by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Cytological analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid did not show any abnormal cells or blasts.

A course of oral corticosteroid therapy was prescribed and 20 Gy of radiation was administered to the whole brain including the left orbit. Vision was improved dramatically in the left eye. Isolated optic nerve relapse of leukaemic infiltration is of paramount importance to early diagnosis, as vision can be saved if treatment with orbital radiotherapy is initiated promptly.

Paratesticular sarcoma are extremely rare malignant tumours. Unlike other sites, they tend to be lower grade and have higher propensity of lymphatic spread. They tend to fail locally and occasionally in the regional lymph nodes. In the absence of target volume delineation guidelines and technical illustration of conformal planning, we have made an attempt to illustrate conformal planning methodology and define target volume based on current evidence in a case of paratesticular sarcoma.

We are presenting a case of 62-year-old male who presented with 15-cm scrotal swelling and underwent high inguinal orchidectomy with ligation of spermatic cord. Histopathology presented a well-differentiated leiomyosarcoma of epididymis. Post-operative radiotherapy target volume included the tumour bed, ipsilateral inguinal nodes and lower pelvic nodes as the clinical target volume.

Adjuvant radiotherapy using advanced delivery technique such as volumetric arc technique can provide good dose distribution with good sparing of organs at risk. The downside of conformal radiation delivery is that it is a resource-intensive and has no established target volume delineation guidelines.

This critical review of the literature seeks to understand the psychological impact that treatment interventions may have on prostate cancer (PC) survivors.

A literature search was conducted using databases of peer-reviewed literature. The search terms used were devised using the building-blocks technique to divide the query into facets. The articles were manually assessed for relevance and appraised using the relevant Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool. Government guidelines and regulations were also used following a manual search on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) website. This process resulted in a total of 12 sources being included in the critical review.

The key themes that arose from the review were masculinity, depression, anxiety and psychological implications related to sexual functioning. Psychological impact varies on an individual basis and is influenced by the quality of a patient’s experience during and after treatment in relation to sufficient information giving and support.

Open communication should be encouraged by healthcare professionals to assess patient mental wellbeing. The extent of psychological impact varies on an individual basis; however, there are predictive factors that can make an individual more at risk of being affected psychologically post-PC treatment.

Microcomputers play an increasingly important role in the delivery of radiation therapy. Exposure to neutron irradiation can produce undesirable effects in modern microcomputers. The objective of this study is to measure acute and cumulative effects of neutron exposure of Intel-based microcomputers in photon and proton therapy treatment environments.

Multiple computers were irradiated with neutrons produced from MEVION S250 passive scattering proton therapy and from Varian 21EX Linear Accelerator photon therapy systems. The energy of the proton beam was 232 MeV and the photon beam energies were 6 and 18 MV. Rates of fatal errors in computer processing unit (CPU) cores were measured.

Varying rates of fatal system errors due to upsets in the CPU cores were observed. Post-exposure routine stress testing revealed no permanent hardware defects in the random access memory (RAM) or hard disk drive (HDD) of any tested systems. Microchip manufacturers fit increasingly high numbers of transistors in the same volume and the susceptibility to radiation thus increases.

This work explores if the process size of a microchip is the dominant factor and also looked at the short- and long-term effects of neutron irradiation on modern microprocessors in a clinical environment. Additionally, methods of effective shielding are proposed.