Program Information
Dosimetric Impacts of Topical Agents and Dressings On Skin in Radiotherapy
K Tse , L Morley , A Cashell , A Sperduti , M McQuestion , J Chow*, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, ON
Presentations
SU-F-T-379 (Sunday, July 31, 2016) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose:
This study investigated the superficial dose enhancement in the application of topical agents, clinical materials (thermal mask and bolus) and dressings in megavoltage photon beam radiotherapy. Different topical skin agents, clinical materials and dressings were evaluated and compared for their skin dosimetric impacts on the patients during radiation treatment.
Methods:
Superficial dose enhancements, or percentage doses with and without the studying materials, were measured using the 6 MV (Field size = 10x10 cm²) photon beams produced by a Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator. Twelve topical agents, five dressings (dry and wet conditions) and three clinical materials were studied. A solid water phantom was used with a MOSFET dose detector (TN-1002RD, Thomson and Nielsen Electronic, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) located under a 1-mm PMMA slab to measure the skin dose. The distance between the radiation source and phantom surface was set to 100 cm in all measurements. The topical agents were distributed evenly with 1.5 mm thickness using our specific sample holder on the phantom surface. Extrapolations were made of 0.5 mm thickness for the agents to provide meaningful clinical value.
Results:
By comparing surface doses without studying materials, it is found that no topical agents had superficial dose enhancement higher than the clinical materials namely, thermoplastic mask (128%), 5-mm Superflab™ bolus (158%) and 10-mm Superflab™ bolus (171%) regarding the same thickness. Superficial dose enhancement of dry dressing did not exceed 110.5%, while wet dressings produced higher dose enhancements (133% for wet Mepilex lite and 141% for wet Mepilex Ag transfer).
Conclusion:
It is concluded that the evaluated topical agents and dry dressings did not increase the superficial dose to a concerning level, even using excessive thickness in every fraction of radiation treatment. Wet dressings were found producing the bolus effect, but was still substantially less than applying a thin 5-mm bolus.
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