IntroductionLung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in Europe and the US. Isolated metastases to skeletal muscle and the mandible are very uncommon.Case presentationThis report presents two cases. Case 1 concerns a 45-year-old Caucasian woman affected by muscle metastasis of the right thigh from non-small-cell lung cancer. Case 2 concerns a 61-year-old Caucasian man affected by mandible metastasis from non-small-cell lung cancer. Both metastases were detected by diagnostic imaging studies. Both patients were treated with radiation therapy with palliative and antalgic intent.ConclusionRadiation therapy was effective and well tolerated in both cases. Both our patients are alive, with follow-up of 18 months and five months, respectively.
Objectives: To determine interobserver variability in axillary nodal contouring in breast cancer (BC) radiotherapy (RT) by comparing the clinical target volume of participating single centres (SC-CTV) with a gold-standard CTV (GS-CTV). Methods: The GS-CTV of 3 patients (P1, P2, P3) with increasing complexity was created in DICOM format from the median contour of axillary CTVs drawn by BC experts, validated using the simultaneous truth and performance level estimation and peer-reviewed. GS-CTVs were compared with the correspondent SC-CTVs drawn by radiation oncologists, using validated metrics and a total score (TS) integrating all of them. Results: Eighteen RT centres participated in the study. Comparative analyses revealed that, on average, the SC-CTVs were smaller than GS-CTV for P1 and P2 (by −29.25% and −27.83%, respectively) and larger for P3 (by +12.53%). The mean Jaccard index was greater for P1 and P2 compared to P3, but the overlap extent value was around 0.50 or less. Regarding nodal levels, L4 showed the highest concordance with the GS. In the intra patient comparison, L2 and L3 achieved lower TS than L4. Nodal levels showed discrepancy with GS which was not statistically significant for P1, and negligible for P2, while P3 had the worst agreement. DICE Similarity Coefficient did not exceed the minimum threshold for agreement of 0.70 in all the measurements. Conclusions: Substantial differences were observed between SC- and GS-CTV, especially for P3 with altered arm set-up. L2 and L3 were the most critical levels. The study highlighted these key points to address. Advances in knowledge The present study compares, by means of validated geometric indexes, manual segmentationsof axillary lymph nodes in breast cancer from different observers and different institutionsmade on radiotherapy planning computed tomography images. Assessing such variability is ofparamount importance, as geometric uncertainties might lead to incorrect dosimetry andcompromise oncological outcome.
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