Feasibility and Early Clinical Assessment of Flattening Filter Free (FFF) Based Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) Treatments

Overview

Journal Radiat Oncol

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialties Oncology
Radiology

Date 2011 Sep 14

PMID 21910868

Citations 52

Authors

Marta Scorsetti

Filippo Alongi

Simona Castiglioni

Alessandro Clivio

Antonella Fogliata

Francesca Lobefalo

Pietro Mancosu

Pierina Navarria

Valentina Palumbo

Chiara Pellegrini

Sara Pentimalli

Giacomo Reggiori

Anna M Ascolese

Antonella Roggio

Stefano Arcangeli

Angelo Tozzi

Eugenio Vanetti

Luca Cozzi

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: To test feasibility and safety of clinical usage of Flattening Filter Free (FFF) beams for delivering ablative stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) doses to various tumor sites, by means of Varian TrueBeam™ (Varian Medical Systems).

Methods And Materials: Seventy patients were treated with SBRT and FFF: 51 lesions were in the thorax (48 patients),10 in the liver, 9 in isolated abdominal lymph node, adrenal gland or pancreas. Doses ranged from 32 to 75 Gy, depending on the anatomical site and the volume of the lesion to irradiate. Lung lesions were treated with cumulative doses of 32 or 48 Gy, delivered in 4 consecutive fractions. The liver patients were treated in 3 fractions with total dose of 75 Gy. The isolated lymph nodes were irradiated in 6 fractions with doses of 45 Gy. The inclusion criteria were the presence of isolated node, or few lymph nodes in the same lymph node region, in absence of other active sites of cancer disease before the SBRT treatment.

Results: All 70 patients completed the treatment. The minimum follow-up was 3 months. Six cases of acute toxicities were recorded (2 Grade2 and 2 Grade3 in lung and 2 Grade2 in abdomen). No patient experienced acute toxicity greater than Grade3. No other types or grades of toxicities were observed at clinical evaluation visits.

Conclusions: This study showed that, with respect to acute toxicity, SBRT with FFF beams showed to be a feasible technique in 70 consecutive patients with various primary and metastatic lesions in the body.

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