Last month, at the 2018 American Brachytherapy Society's annual meeting, an abstract by Daniel Krauss, M.D. on single fraction brachytherapy (19 Gy single fraction) was selected, and he was named a “Judith Stitt Best Abstract Award” recipient.
According to Dr. Krauss, “There continue to be relatively few centers offering definitive HDR brachytherapy in a single treatment at this point as it should still be considered investigational. What this study demonstrated is that it is very safe and well tolerated by patients to deliver the dose in a single treatment fraction. However, with longer follow up, we found a higher than expected local recurrence rate at the 19 Gy dose of nearly 19 percent at five years. Historically, multifraction HDR brachytherapy treatment regimens have been associated with local control rates in the 95-100 percent range. Therefore, given how low the toxicity was, this study provides the basis for further investigation of single treatment HDR brachytherapy at higher dose levels.”