Third ISIORT Meeting Held in Aachen, Germany

[September 2002]  The third International Society of Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (ISIORT) Meeting was held at the University of Aachen in Aachen, Germany from September 11th through 14th. Intraop Medical was one of the sponsors of this biannual meeting. More than 50 IORT specialists from 10 countries attended this meeting to exchange information on clinical results and IORT techniques.

Mobetron users from the United States contributed to the scientific program. Staff from the University Hospitals of Cleveland conducted a workshop on the use of the Mobetron for IORT. The workshop was very well received, and gave the European attendees the opportunity to better understand the Mobetron system and how it might fit into their programs for cancer treatment. Presenters from University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) reported on their clinical results of using IORT for the treatment of advanced neuroblastoma (a pediatric cancer) and their use of IORT to treat recurrent head and neck cancer. The results reported for both local control and survival in these difficult to treat diseases through the addition of an IORT component to the treatment were excellent. In the case of the neuroblastoma study, IORT in combination with the surgery was often the only component of radiation treatment required to achieve control of the disease. If these results continue to hold up over time and for larger numbers of patients, IORT could become a mainstay in the treatment of this disease and result in eliminating weeks of radiation for these children. UCSF is currently preparing the results of their IORT head and neck study for publication in both a surgical and radiation therapy journal so that it can reach the specialists practicing in this area that were unable to attend the meeting.

Several European centers presented clinical data on their use of IORT for the treatment of early stage breast cancer. IORT treatment for this disease was pioneered in the early 1990’s by a U.S. center and several French centers with fixed based linear accelerators. The advent of mobile IORT units that can be used in the operating room makes the use of IORT for this relatively short surgical procedure practical. At this meeting, reports were presented from centers that had treated more than 700 early stage breast patients with IORT. The use of IORT for breast cancer is an application that is attracting an increasing number of practitioners from around the world. Some of the other sites of clinical interest presented at the meeting were: colorectal cancer, sarcomas, and gastrointestinal disease.

The next ISIORT meeting will be held in New York City in November 2004.