(Article in Japanese)

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Intracranial germinomas are one of the most radiosensitive tumors known and are curable by radiotherapy alone. Although radiotherapy has been the standard treatment for intracranial germinomas, agreement on the optimal management of these tumors with respect to treatment volume, dose, and use chemotherapy has not been reached. This article provides a brief overview of intracranial germinomas and explores the role of radiotherapy in the management of these tumors. [Article in Japanese]

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Purpose: To evaluate the preliminary results of concomitant chemoradiation for locally recurrent rectal cancer.
Materials and Methods: Seven patients were treated with concomitant chemoradiation for locally recurrent rectal cancer between May 2000 and December 2003. Four of 7 patients were also treated with hyperthermia. Their chief complaints were buttock pain (7/7) and bleeding (1/7). All patients were treated with a combination external beam radiotherapy (60 Gy) and chemotherapy (3 cases: CPT-11, 4 cases: 5-FU/LV).
Results: All symptoms disappeared, however, 5 of 7 cases appeared again. Time to 50% local control was 14 months and time to 50% survival was 28 months. Conclusion: The results of concomitant chemoradiation for locally recurrent rectal cancer were not satisfactory. [Article in Japanese]

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A national survey on the current status of pediatric radiation therapy was performed in October 2004. We sent questionnaires to 638 radiotherapy facilities in Japan (except for Kansai area) and 245 responses were analyzed. According to the database of committee of Japanese Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (JASTRO), the number of pediatric patients who received radiation therapy during 2003 in Japan was 1,101. The most frequent pediatric malignancy was brain tumor, followed by leukemia and lymphoma. The total effort of radiation therapy for children was two to six times larger than that for adult patients. An additional fee seems to be necessary for the highly technical and laborious radiation therapy required for children. [Article in Japanese]

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Purpose: Japanese Group of Brachytherapy (JGB) of the Japanese Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology conducted a survey on accidents of brachytherapy. The purpose of this report is to show results of the first whole country survey for brachytherapy facilities in Japan.
Methods and Materials: The questionnaire about accidents of brachytherapy which had occurred between September 2002 and August 2004 was sent to 254 facilities in Japan.
Results: There were 14 reports of accidents from 224 responders. By type of accidents, there were 6 events of fractionated dose delivered by more or less than 50% of prescribed dose, 3 of treatments not to be started after completion of application, 2 of trouble in source transfer, 1 of a LDR source left in the body, 1 of an unexpected exposure to medical personnel and 1 of a mistake in operation. There were no cases with serious illness reported in this survey.
Conclusion: Although the number of reported cases was limited, human error was considered to be a main cause in the majority of reported medical events. The first whole country survey by JGB provided useful information to prevent the medical events in brachytherapy. The survey is expected to be continued in the future. [Article in Japanese]

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We constructed remote radiotherapy planning system using remote disk mount technique. Remote disk mount technique is to start system from network disk drive instead of internal disk drive. By using this system, a radiotherapy plan at an affiliated institution could be made in central institution only by changing the mount disk. Although there took a few seconds to start system from remote disk drive because of network speeds, we could make a radiotherapy plan with no stress if the system started from mount disk. For this system, we used business line with VPN (virtual private network) system in order to protect the private data. This system can correspond to two or more institutions by changing the mount disk and is useful for remote radiotherapy. [Article in Japanese]

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