One thousand cases of cobalt-based high dose rate brachytherapy treated at a tertiary care center: A retrospective study.

PURPOSE: This is a study of our experience with Co-60 high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR BT) from a tertiary care center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: One thousand patients were treated with Cobalt-based HDR BT for more than 6 years. The practice of BT was analyzed for clinical outcome, physical, radiobiological, and technical aspects. RESULTS: Among those 1000 patients, 906 (90.6%) patients had gynecologic cancer, 29 (2.9%) patients had intraluminal BT, 63 (6.3%) hadhead &neck (2.1%), keloid (2.1%) and mold BT (2.1%), and 2 (0.2%) had sarcoma. Dose rate decreased by 48.9%, and treatment time increased from 9.33 to 18.27 min over 5 years. No patients treatment was abandoned because of machin-related problems. CONCLUSION: Cobalt-based HDR BT is preferable in terms of lesser source exchanges, relatively uniform treatment time, quality assurance requirement, and cost. (C) 2020 American Brachytherapy Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.