SGRT: Essential Care in Radiation Therapy?

Over the past several years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cancer care providers worldwide who are choosing to adopt surface guided radiation therapy (SGRT) as essential care in radiation therapy due to its ability to support greater treatment accuracy in general patient positioning, DIBH, and SRS.

In February 2022, Task Group 302 of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, issued technical guidelines for the use of SGRT. The AAPM task group was assigned to “provide technical guidelines for clinical indications of use for general positioning, breast deep-inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) treatment, and frameless stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS).¹

A recent study in August 2021 by Al-Hallaq et al. describes the role that surface guided radiation therapy (SGRT) has in driving potential improvements for patient safety in radiation therapy delivery. In particular, errors in isocenter and immobilization were highlighted as the most preventable events when SGRT is incorporated into the radiation therapy workflow.²

The Advisory Board, a leading healthcare research organization with 4,500+ member organizations, performed a recent analysis in oncology around the business case for SGRT in its Oncology Clinical Technology Compendium. The authors concluded that there is a high potential for additional patient throughput relative to the cost of SGRT per patient, making it an investment worth consideration. In addition, they suggested that SGRT also offers an important opportunity for progressive cancer care providers to differentiate their service offering.³

As more studies are published, we believe the takeaway is that SGRT helps increase precision and protection for the patient. And with C-RAD’s modern SGRT solution that incorporates an advanced deformable algorithm, we are focused on ensuring high precision, safety and efficiency for advanced radiation therapy.

1Hania A. Al-Hallaq, Laura Cerviño, Alonso N. Gutierrez, Amanda Havnen-Smith, Susan A. Higgins, Malin Kügele, Laura Padilla, Todd Pawlicki, Nicholas Remmes, Koren Smith, Xiaoli Tang, Wolfgang A. Tomé “AAPM task group report 302: Surface guided radiotherapy,” Medical Physics, 18 February 2022.

2Hania Al-Hallaq, Vania Batista, Malin Kügele, Eric Ford, Natalie Viscariello, and Juergen Meyer, “The role of surface-guided radiation therapy for improving patient safety.” Radiotherapy & Oncology. 2021 Oct 1, Vol 163: 229-236.

3Advisory Board – “Oncology Clinical Technology Compendium” (February 6, 2020).

If you’d like to learn more about C-RAD’s SGRT solutions: