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Dr Smith Reviews Short-Course Radiation Therapy in Rectal Cancer
J. Joshua Smith, MD, PhD, FACS, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses short-course vs long-course radiation therapy in rectal cancer, presented at the 2022 GDI GI Meeting.
Transcript
I'm Josh Smith. I'm a colorectal surgeon/surgical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering here in New York, and focus on rectal cancer.
Today, I'm debating Dr. Chris Crane on short-course versus long-course chemo radiation in the context of treating our patients with rectal cancer. I am pro short-course today in the debate.
The reason this is relevant is because of the recent trials looking at total adjuvant therapy in rectal cancer.
There are two trials of interest, one that produced 23 trial, and then also the RAPIDO trial, which is one of the largest trials that's been published to date using short-course to optimize response in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer.
I think the reason this is really important for our patients is because it optimizes their time.
So, you can essentially treat 5 patients with short-course for every 1 patient you could treat with long-course.
In addition, it's quite cost effective. If you look at quality of life adjusted years, you're essentially saving almost $130,000 to $140,000 for patients treated with short-course versus long-course.
I'll make the case that short-course is really cost effective, patient friendly, and you can still see the same types of optimization in terms of response, and still have organ preservation options for patients treating them in a TNT paradigm as we are currently with our rectal cancer patients.
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