O papel da dose efetiva biológica (BED) na radioterapia clínica

: alteração de fracionamento e tempo de tratamento

Abstract

Radiotherapy is one of the main weapons (non-surgical) used in cancer treatment. Nearly 40% of oncological patients receive radiotherapeutic treatment, alone or in addition to other therapeutic modalities, during the course of the treatment. The interruption of an unscheduled radiotherapeutic treatment is invariably detrimental to its successful completion. The treatment compensation scheme is designed for each case and may result in the completion of treatment as initially prescribed by the clinician, or in changes in the number of treatment fractions and/or the dose per fraction. The continuous increase on the number of cases with interruptions has created the need to update and speed up the calculating process of compensation for interrupted treatments, which until now was being done manually. In this project, a Matlab software was developed to allow an automatic analysis of compensation schemes for interrupted treatments, using the radiobiological concepts of Biologically Effective Dose (BED) and Equivalent Dose (EQD2) based on de Linear Quadratic Model. By comparing the software crated, with others, regarding the essential features of dose compensation calculations – BED and EQD2 for tumor tissue and organs at risk (OARs); a/b ratios; various solutions for compensation schemes; automatic suggestions for compensation schemes – proved the software is complete and suitable for clinical practice. The elaboration of compensation schemes, using the developed software, for the 14 cases randomly chosen, of previously interrupted treatments at the Júlio Teixeira S.A., made it possible to compare generated schemes by the software with the compensation schemes chosen by the clinical staff. Therefore, the reliability and versatility of the developed software was proven with the results obtained, since clinical response followed in most cases the same line of thought as the suggestions automatically generated by the developed software. The implementation of the software in clinical practice, reflected the goal of this project in creating a tool that would streamline the process of calculating compensations for treatment gaps.

Date of Award	11 Jan 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Margarida Rocha de Oliveira Cavaco (Supervisor) & Joana Vale Ferreira da Silva (Co-Supervisor)