Programme

Overview: Summation of doses is required in several treatments of radiation oncology. The Symposium will give an overview for some of these namely combined treatment of brachytherapy and photons, the setting of re-irradiation, and adaptation. These speakers will each introduce the relevant issues, the current procedures in daily clinical practice incl. the main methods/tools in use. An overarching topic is deformable image registration software, which is needed in each case. Current advances, assessment of uncertainties and an outlook on registration approaches will wrap up the session.

Overview: Highly skilled and sufficient workforce is crucial for quality and safe radiotherapy, but many regions of the world are facing staff shortages due to various reasons. RTTs are particularly affected, especially because in many countries worldwide, the profession of RTT is not recognised and there is lack of education and training programmes. Therefore, comprehensive and innovative workforce recruitment and retention strategies are of paramount importance. Moreover, targeted interventions at workplace aimed at enhancing job satisfaction, resilience, mental and physical health are vital components in reducing staff turnover and ensuring service continuity. The speakers in this session will discuss existing challenges and share best practices and solutions, mainly within the context of European region.

Overview: The US government has launched the Cancer Moonshot program in 2016, aiming to “reduce the cancer death rate by half within 25 years and improve the lives of people with cancer and cancer survivors.” The program emphasis, that it “invests heavily in opportunities to speed delivery of cancer drugs and vaccines to prevent and treat cancer”. Radiation Oncology or Radiotherapy are not mentioned. In this debate, we will hear four proposals from four esteemed colleagues, describing a Cancer Moonshot program for Radiation Oncology, following ESTRO`s vision “Optimal Health for All”. The programs aim at transformative breakthroughs in Radiation Oncology, to substantially reduce cancer death rate and improve quality of life. The esteemed colleagues have a different professional background – one Radiation Oncologist, one medical Physicist, one Radiobiologist and one RTT. However, it is obvious that such an ambitious goal can only be achieved together, including our ESTRO society. All colleagues aim to convince the ESTRO conference participants to dedicate one Billion Euros over a period of 15 years to realize their vision of a Radiation Oncology Cancer Moonshot program.