Protons 101: Prostate Cancer: Minimizing Toxicity while Curing the Cancer.
Today is a summary article of my current thinking on the management of prostate cancer. This article was inspired by the release of two large scale studies published in the last week. First, the two articles: For reference, if you’re in the medical field, they are included as links. A POPULATION-BASED STUDY OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE […]
Read MoreNovember is Lung Cancer Awareness Month
Today, I had the opportunity to discuss lung cancer with the great team at Living Oklahoma. Unfortunately lung cancer is far too common and is BY FAR the number one cause of cancer deaths. In fact, more patients will pass away from lung cancer than from breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined. I didn’t do […]
Read MoreRadiation Dose to the Heart is a Modifiable Cardiac Risk Factor in Cancer Treatment
As we head into November, which is Lung Cancer Awareness month, I wanted to give a general overview of data from this year showing the important link between Major Cardiac Events and Radiation Dose to the heart. To me, I think it is amazing that there are this many studies from this year. This isn’t […]
Read MoreProtons 101: Breast Cancer and Heart Dose – Data Supporting The Much Broader Use of Proton Therapy
This article applies to locally advanced breast cancers where nodal irradiation is required or cases where IMRT is being considered in breast cancer treatment. TAKE HOME MESSAGE – Proton plans are better at avoiding the heart than IMRT. Above are images showing a Proton Therapy plan on the left and an IMRT plan on the right. […]
Read MoreProtons 101: Proton Therapy is Superior to IMRT for Head and Neck Cancer Treatment
First things first. I need to give credit to Dr. Frank for the title – It is a great, honest, straightforward statement on where we believe we are today as radiation oncologists who treat head and neck cancer. I moved to Oklahoma City primarily for the treatment of head of neck cancer. I believe that […]
Read MoreProtons 101: Prostate Cancer: Summary of Current Data
DISCLAIMER / About the Blog – Please read once if you haven’t. And please note – today, I just talk about traditional fractionation schedules or modestly hypofractionated data. Today, I’m refreshing a post from may of 2019 where I reviewed prostate cancer radiation outcome data. That post made me focus on intermediate risk disease, and […]
Read MoreProtons 101: Comparative Effectiveness of Proton Chemoradiotherapy to Photon Chemoradiotherapy
DISCLAIMER / About the Blog – Please read once if you haven’t. Below is a more technical post on what I think is one of the most powerful studies to come out this year. This study was presented at ASCO this summer and showed that by treating patients with protons rather than with traditional x-rays, […]
Read MoreProtons 101: An Example of a CNS Tumor Proton Therapy Plan
Today we’ll look at a place where there actually are not large studies showing significant benefits to proton therapy. So if you don’t think protons are better, you could easily use this disease site to state that there is very little evidence of improvement in outcomes with the use of proton therapy. I will point […]
Read MoreReal Men Wear Pink Campaign
Today, I’m announcing my “Real Men Wear Pink Campaign” to help raise money to fight breast cancer. OFFICIAL LINK TO MY AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY PAGE. The campaign will run from August – October as we hold events to raise money and awareness regarding breast cancer and the risk and impact that the disease has on […]
Read MoreProtons 101: An example of a breast cancer proton therapy plan
Today, we’ll walk through images from a breast cancer proton plan. From a technical standpoint, Its a unique case for a number of reasons but it does showcase some places and ways in which proton plans greatly outperform what we can accomplish using a traditional linear accelerator with either photons or electrons. Breast Cancer Treatment: […]
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