Dose Escalated Radiotherapy for Rectal Cancers Using MR-guided Radiotherapy

Standard radiotherapy in the UK involves having daily chemotherapy tablets with radiotherapy treatment for 5 weeks at a dose of 52.5Gy to the rectal cancer over 25 fractions. This is the likely treatment participants will be having if they decide not to take part in this study. Increasing the dose to 60Gy is shown to increase the chance that rectal cancer will be treated completely, a term known as "complete pathological response". Patients who have a complete pathological response after their treatment can avoid surgery and enter into a surveillance programme to monitor for early signs of the cancer returning. Surveillance can mean 3-6 months camera tests and MRI scans depending on the local unit. If these patients continue to show signs of complete pathological response then they can avoid long term complications from surgery such as a stoma. Unit studies have shown that that increasing the dose of radiotherapy can cause slightly more bowel and bladder side effects, but using adaptive radiotherapy to limit radiotherapy to normal tissue could keep the rate of bothersome side effects as low, which is similar as standard treatment. All adaptive treatments within this trial will be delivered on a state of the art, radiotherapy machine called an MR-linac (Magnetic Resonance Linear Accelerator). It combines an MRI scanner with a radiotherapy treatment machine called a Linear Accelerator (called a 'linac' for short). The use of the MR-linac means there is no extra radiation dose …

This description comes directly from the study's public registry record.

Brian Hin, FRCR MD(res)  ·  extension 4228  ·  brian.hin@rmh.nhs.uk

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