MIC-Tea Time: The Evolution and Future Horizons of Image-Guided Adaptive Brachytherapy
MIC-Node: IGTT
Speaker: Ap.Prof. Dr.med.univ. Dr.scient.med. Maximilian Schmid
Image-guided adaptive brachytherapy (IGABT) is an innovative treatment within definitive chemoradiation of locally advanced cervical cancer. In contrast to the previous standard in brachytherapy, where all patients received the same treatment (“one fits all”), IGABT adapts according to the individual tumor spread and tumor response. This has been enabled by (1) the repetitive performance of MRI during the course of chemoradiation visualizing the individual tumor extent and the respective regression pattern and (2) the development of combined intracavitary interstitial applicators, which allow for a larger degree of freedom in dose delivery. Major aspects of this novel treatment concept have been developed at the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Medical University of Vienna and have been analyzed within the observational international prospective multi-center study “EMBRACE”. The excellent results of the EMBRACE study have been recently published in Lancet Oncology and the Journal of Clinical Oncology and have led to the integration of IGABT into the latest international guidelines of cervical cancer treatment. The current presentation will provide an overview of IGABT and will give an outlook on ongoing and future studies of the EMBRACE study group.
Maximilian Schmid is a radiation oncologist at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Medical University of Vienna. He is 2nd deputy head of the Department of Radiation Oncology and head of brachytherapy. He is clinically in charge of the treatment of sarcoma and gynecological cancer. His research interest is focused on IGABT, use of MRI in radiotherapy and treatment of cervical and vaginal cancer. Maximilian Schmid is part of the coordinators of the EMBRACE studies and - together with Barbara Knäusl - head of an upcoming Christian Doppler Laboratory for image and knowledge driven precision radiation oncology (start 01/2024).
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