Active clinical trials for "Unilateral Breast Neoplasms"

The standard treatment for breast cancer is surgery followed by adjuvant breast radiation therapy in most cases. For left sided breast cancers, the heart dose delivered by the radiation treatment is often of particular concern. In order to spare the heart, different strategies are currently available, including active breathing control (ABC) and voluntary deep in inspiration breath hold (DIBH) (both strategies are currently being used at our centre). To perform accurate heart-sparing treatments, it is important to ensure that patients are positioned consistently. One available approach is through surface imaging which tracks the position of a portion of the skin surface, known as the AlignRT system (VisionRT Ltd, London, UK).

The purpose of this research study is to demonstrate that Deep Inspiration Breath Hold (DIBH), the technique used at the University of North Carolina (UNC) for left-side breast cancer radiation therapy, can reduce side effects to the heart.

This is an epidemiological cross-sectional study aiming to determine the prevalence of lymphedema and the incidence of risk factors in patients diagnosed with unilateral breast cancer in a cohort from 2008 to 2020 in a specialised oncology centre in Valle del Cauca, Colombia.

Radiation therapy (RT) of the breast is a critical component of modern breast cancer treatment. RT treatments have led to improved local control and overall survival of breast cancer patients. However, the incidence of radiation induced harmful effects is increasing in these patients. This is because in delivering RT, it is difficult to completely avoid surrounding non-cancerous normal tissue, including the heart. The main concern here is that radiation induced effects on the heart may lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in a patient's life, potentially many years after radiation. Despite methods that can detect alterations in blood flow one to two years following radiotherapy, knowledge of early radiation effects to the heart is still limited. A previous animal experiment performed by our group involved delivering a radiation dose to the heart in a manner similar to the way a heart would be exposed, during radiotherapy for a cancer involving the left breast. Taking several images over the months following radiation with a new imaging technique, hybrid PET/MRI, has suggested an increase in inflammation can be detected as early as one-week following irradiation and may be the triggering event for cardiac disease seen in women 10-15 years after radiotherapy. The investigators propose a pilot study where 15 left-sided breast cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy will be imaged before, as well as one week and one-year post radiotherapy with our hybrid PET/MRI scanner. Areas of inflammation, changes in blood flow, and scar formation within the heart, will be measured by looking at the difference between images that are taken after radiation treatment to the images taken before treatment. The expectation is that any areas of the heart that show detectable differences in the images will be directly related to how much radiation was deposited in those areas. The information gained from this pilot study which will correlate the amount of radiation administered to the degree and extent of injury will help aid in the design of new treatment strategies, that can hopefully decrease or eliminate inadvertent heart damage, thereby, improving the quality of life for breast cancer patients.

To assess the need of respiratory gated radiotherapy in left sided breast cancer patients.