(Wednesday, 7/17/2019) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM
Room: Stars at Night Ballroom 1
Present-day technology for radiotherapy (RT) presents many challenges when translated into a low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) including capital resources constraints, limitations in staffing needed to support high-quality care / quality assurance, the complexity and cost of RT vaults and the need for extremely high efficiency and throughput. It is estimates that by 2020 LMIC may have a deficit of approximately 9000 medical linear accelerators. As a result, there is an obvious need for low-cost radiotherapy devices.
For example, substantial gains may be realized by rethinking the design of IMRT delivery devices, in particular the multi-leaf collimator. Other method to decrease capital costs of RT may be accomplished through the development of more cost-effective lower-energy x-ray RT devices or through simplifying the complexity of linac-based RT delivery. Finally, a self-shielded RT device could also decrease the economical barrier to RT in LMIC.
The symposium lectures will give an overview of the need of RT in LMIC as well as offer four different strategies that have the potential to broaden access to RT in LMIC.
Learning Objectives:
1. To understand the challenges, in addition to the traditional perspective of financial and human resource gaps, in overcoming the need for radiotherapy in low- and middle- income countries.
2. To appreciate the challenges of using current IMRT delivery technology in LMIC and some emerging designs to address these needs.
3. To learn about the advantages and challenges of a novel cost-effective kilovoltage x-ray RT system.
4. To understand the advantages and challenges of fixed-beam treatment systems and how these challenges can be overcome.
5. To understand the basic design principles embodied by the the Zap-X system, the first self-shield therapeutic radiation device.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: The work was partly supported by Precicion RT.
Handouts
Keywords
Radiation Therapy, Radiosurgery, Intensity Modulation
Taxonomy
TH- External beam- photons: Development (new technology and techniques)
Contact Email
