[en] Introduction: Tumor control is the principal aim of curative radiotherapy. For the last decades great advances have been achieved on radiotherapy for delivering highly conformal dose distributions allowing for dose escalation to the most resistant areas. In order to adequately develop strategies for the redistribution of dose (or dose boosting), the predicted effectiveness of the created dose distribution should be quantified in terms of tumor control. In 1999 Sánchez-Nieto and Nahum introduced the concept of the ΔTCP DVH-bin-based model. The aim of their work was to provide a tool to quantitatively evaluate the influence of delivering non-uniform dose to a tumor and evaluate how this affects the probability of controlling that tumor. In this work, we propose a ΔTCP voxel-based model using the patient information and the computational tools available nowadays. The developed tool evaluates the impact on the TCP of different dose distributions with the possibility of incorporating information about the oxygen distribution and number of clonogens within a voxel in the target.

[en] We retrospectively reviewed surgical biopsy findings of lesions diagnosed as radial scars (RS) at stereotactic core-needle biopsy (SCNB). RS was diagnosed in 52 of 1415 (3.7%) consecutive mammographically detected lesions that underwent 14-gauge automated SCNB. Subsequent surgical biopsy findings were available for 43 lesions in 41 women constituting the study group. Of these 43 lesions, histopathological analysis of the surgical specimen yielded RS in 27 (63%), RS plus atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH) in 8 (18%), RS plus carcinoma in five (12%), and only carcinoma in three (7%). Carcinomas underestimated at SCNB (n=8) were two in situ carcinomas, two invasive ductal carcinomas not otherwise specified, and four tubular carcinomas. A statistically significant difference (P=0.02) was found between the mean pathologic size of RS without carcinoma and of RS containing carcinoma. Mammographic features could not be used reliably to predict the presence of carcinoma at excision of lesions diagnosed as RS at SCNB. The results suggest that the diagnosis of RS at 14-gauge SCNB of mammographically detected lesions is an indication for surgical biopsy because of the high prevalence of carcinoma in these lesions. (orig.)

[en] Surgical treatment of an occluded or stenotic portosystemic shunt is difficult and carries a high risk of mortality. We report two cases of early thrombosis of distal splenorenal shunt (DSRS) successfully treated by transcatheter recanalization and stent placement. At 18-month follow-up, the patients remained asymptomatic and control venograms showed continued patency of the shunt with no evidence of stenosis or collaterals

[en] Introduction: Observational clinical studies of radiotherapy (RT) outcome for different fractionation schemes are a very costly and demanding task. Therefore, the development of computational tools that simulate tumour and normal tissue response under scenarios can be enormously useful for trials design. This work presents a model for treatment outcome evaluation of different fractionation schemes considering tumour characteristics and normal tissue tolerances. Methodology: Tumour response is simulated with a previously published in silico model (Tumour Response Model, TRM), which considers a representative virtual tumour created from the volumetric information of real tumours. This model can also import clinical information about tumour oxygenation and real inhomogeneous dose distributions and considers the following biological processes: tumour growth, accelerated proliferation, hypoxia-induced angiogenesis, oxygen-dependent cell killing, resorption of dead cells and shrinkage. Moreover, the response of normal tissues (NTCP) is calculated from the clinical DVH by using the empirical Lyman- Kutcher-Burman (LKB) model.