Smarter Medicine In Radiation Oncology - Current And Proven Treatment Concepts Offering The Greatest Possible Benefit To Cancer Patients In Clinical Practice

Modern procedures in radiation therapy with respect to indication, therapy planning and implementation of shorter treatment regimens result in high local tumor control and excellent quality of life in frequent and clinically relevant disease entities including breast and prostate cancer as well as bone metastases. In the adjuvant therapy for early breast cancer, a careful comparative analysis of the use of endocrine adjuvant treatment over five years versus postoperative radiation therapy over less than four weeks may result in omission of radiation treatment in a selected patient population. Partial breast irradiation, while treating the tumor bed only in low risk situations. and hypofractionated whole breast radiotherapy for patients with a higher risk profile for local recurrence, halved treatment time compared to 10 years ago, making adjuvant radiotherapy for patients with breast cancer more convenient. In patients with localized prostate cancer, the introduction of hypofractionated treatment regimens halved the number of daily fractions and current developments point towards a one-week outpatient therapy for locally limited disease using high precision stereotactic techniques and accurate therapy planning based on multifunctional imaging. Patients with bone metastases are more and more treated with a single fraction, high precision stereotactic radiotherapy (rad iosurgery) with high analgesic potential and achieving long lasting local tumor control. These modern, often significantly shorter, radiotherapy treatment regimens not only result in an excellent treatment response and better quality of life for patients, but also include a better utilization of radiotherapy resources needing less treatment machines and thus helping to reduce costs in the Swiss healthcare system.