News
Webinar focus on prostate cancer
28 Nov, 2022This webinar and article are available in Dutch only. Click here to go to the Dutch page.
BRAVO Symposium | Friday, March 18th, 2022
09 Feb, 2022Topic: Patients with limited metastases benefit from metastasis-directed therapy - Belgium took the lead in this new and promising approach.
It is with great pleasure that we announce the 2022 BRAVO Symposium to be held in Brussels on Friday March 18th.
BRAVO and BeMedTech will bring together the Belgian Radiation Oncology community in a live and in-person format that builds on the success of our 2018 symposium. This year, we continue our mission to increase awareness of radiation oncology as a safe and modern treatment method of cancer.
More information and registration.
Lung Cancer: Summary of Cost–Effectiveness Studies
15 Dec, 2021Studies on radiotherapy cost-effectiveness in the treatment of lung cancer have been carried out both in the European and in the Belgian context. A large comparative study published in 2020 in the Lancet Oncology Review shows annual expenditure for Belgian radiotherapy corresponding to 6.4% of the overall expenditure of the total oncology budget, lower than the European average of 7.8%.
Preventive radiotherapy of prostate cancer increases the chance of a definitive recovery
29 Sep, 2021This article is only available in Dutch: original article.
Elective nodal radiotherapy in prostate cancer
10 Aug, 2021In patients with prostate cancer who have a high risk of pelvic nodal disease, the use of elective whole pelvis radiotherapy is still controversial. Two large, randomised, controlled trials (RTOG 9413 and GETUG-01) did not show a benefit of elective whole pelvis radiotherapy over prostate-only radiotherapy. In 2020, the POP-RT trial established the role of elective whole pelvis radiotherapy in patients who have more than a 35% risk of lymph node invasion (known as the Roach formula). POP-RT stressed the importance of patient selection. In patients with cN1 (clinically node positive) disease or...
In 2020, 4,000 fewer cancer diagnoses were made in Belgium than expected, but the catching-up is hopeful
05 Jul, 2021This article is only available in Dutch and French.
Association of survival and local radiotherapy to the bladder versus chemotherapy alone for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC)
15 Feb, 2021Background
Limited data exists on the role of local therapy for metastatic urothelial carcinoma of the bladder (mUC). Large database analysis have inherent limitations but can shed light on survival outcomes in a real-world population and in scenarios not easily studied in a randomized fashion. We hypothesized that in the NCDB, radiotherapy (RT) to the bladder plus chemotherapy (CT) would be associated with improved overall survival (OS) vs CT alone.
Methods
We queried the NCDB for newly diagnosed mUC cases (cT1-4 N0-3 M1) from 2004-2015 treated with CT alone vs CT plus RT to ≥ 45 Gy to the bl...
40 percent fewer cancer diagnoses in 2020
10 Feb, 2021This article is only available in Dutch: original article
“Increased risk of excess mortality in cancer patients due to fear of corona infection”
04 Feb, 2021This article is only available in Dutch: original press release
EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF INNOVATIVE RADIATION TECHNIQUES FOR BREAST CANCER
26 Sep, 2019Authors (in alphabetical order):
Alex De Caluwé, Institut Jules Bordet Katrien Erven, Iridium Kankernetwerk Carine Kirkove, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc Vincent Remouchamps, CHU UCL Namur Liv Veldeman, UZ Gent Caroline Weltens, UZ Leuven
1 BENEFIT OF BREAST RADIOTHERAPY
Curative treatment for breast cancer consists of surgery, radiotherapy and systemic treatments such as chemotherapy, antihormonal therapy and targeted agents. The local treatment options are breast conserving treatment, consisting of breast sparing surgery followed by radiotherapy, and mastectomy with or without radio...