Maskless head and neck radiotherapy study
Removing the mask, not the control.
A newly published study from AdventHealth Celebration (Florida, USA) describes ten head and neck patients treated without a thermoplastic face mask, but supported by a MacroMedics DSPS-Prominent® posterior dorsal shell and baseplate while monitored by surface guidance throughout treatment.
Head and neck radiotherapy without a facial mask.
For most head and neck patients, the thermoplastic face mask becomes a routine part of radiotherapy. But for some, wearing a facial mask is intolerable. The authors point out that mask-related distress is common enough to warrant systematic screening and mitigation, and that for certain patients the mask itself becomes the limiting factor in accepting treatment...
Three of the ten patients that participated in the study had previously declined, or been unable to tolerate mask-based treatment. All ten reported the maskless workflow to be well tolerated in an end-of-course questionnaire. The authors conclude that, for selected patients with mask anxiety or intolerance, maskless surface-guided treatment “may function as both a technical motion-management strategy and a treatment-enabling patient-comfort intervention.
The authors name patient comfort as the primary motivation for this workflow, and we are proud to see the DSPS-Prominent® play a part in it, because our belief remains;
patient comfort is patient control.
Across 330 treatment fractions, intrafraction motion recorded by the surface-guidance system was small, and no fraction had to be abandoned. All ten patients completed their full course without switching to a mask. Automatic beam-holds occurred in about 2% of fractions.
Read the full open-access study in the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics
