Brachytherapy

Venue: RT Conference room

Coordinator: Dr. Khalid Balaraj

Faculty:          Prof. Faiz Khan, Prof. Geoffrey Ibbott, Prof. Jean Bourhis, Prof. Slobodan Devic, Dr. Ali Al-Zahrani, Dr. Khalid Balaraj

Course Description

Brachytherapy (also referred to as Curietherapy) is defined as a short-distance treatment of malignant disease with radiation emanating from small sealed (encapsulated) sources. The sources are placed directly into the treatment volume or near the treatment volume. Main advantages of brachytherapy are: improved localized dose delivery to the target, sharp dose fall-off outside the target volume, and better conformal therapy.

Course Aim

• To cover the basis and general principles of brachytherapy: historical notes on evolution of brachytherapy, sources, after-loading systems, imaging for brachytherapy, dosimetry, radiobiology of different dose rates (LDR, HDR, PDR)
• To discuss different technical & dosimetrical aspects of brachytherapy.
• To discuss clinical subjects: gynaecological (cervix, endometrium), and other applications of brachytherapy.

Target Audience

The course is aimed primarily for radiation oncologists, radiation physicists and radiation therapists who are keen to update themselves on the latest developments in brachytherapy.

Lectures

1. History and Introduction to Brachytherapy (Prof. Faiz Khan)
2. Clinical Aspects of brachytherapy (Prof. Jean Bourhis)
3. Physics Aspects of Brachytherapy (Z. Hassan)
4. Image Guided Brachytherapy (Prof. Slobodan Devic)
5. Recommendations and Regulations for Brachytherapy (Prof. Geoffrey Ibbott)
6. Low-Dose Rate Brachytherapy for Cancer of the Cervix (Dr. Khalid Balaraj)
7. TBA (Dr. Ali Al-Zahrani)
8. TBA    

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