Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Dear brachytherapy community members,

I suppose, we are all already tired of the COVID-19 situation. Soon, this fall will become winter, as usual season after season change, and we want to serve our patients as we usually could. There appeared some news concerning anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, which I hope would be safe, effective, and available for patients and medical staff. Far too many died until now, and too many progressed or delayed their cancer treatment because of the pandemic.
Surprisingly, I would like you to start the reading of JCB 6/2020 from its end: an excellent paper by Elzbieta Van der Steen-Banasik (The Netherlands). Her historical review on the role of brachytherapy in the organ sparing treatment for bladder cancer is a must-read article. It is concluded that a highly effective brachytherapy method with minimal toxicity deserves more worldwide popularity, with which I agree.
The new issue of JCB opens with a Spanish group’s results on a minimally invasive tumor bed implant and peri-operative high-dose-rate brachytherapy for accelerated minimal breast irradiation (AMBI) or anticipated boost in breast-conserving surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ. AMBI could be a good alternative due to low recurrence rates, minimum unnecessary radiation, improvement in treatment logistics, and reduction of over-treatment in well-selected DCIS patients.
The next four clinical investigations are on prostate cancer. Carlo Pietro Soatti et al. (Italy) summarized data on HDR-BT monotherapy for localized prostate cancer in three different dose fractionations. After a 14-year extended follow-up, they concluded that patients treated with a single fraction of 19-20 Gy had a lower biochemical control rate than patients receiving 38 Gy in 4 or 27 Gy in 2 fractions. Finbar Slevin et al. (Leeds, UK) shared their results on 10-year longitudinal health-related quality of life following iodine-125 brachytherapy monotherapy for localized prostate cancer. Clinically mild changes in urinary, bowel, and sexual QoL appear ten years after the treatment. Brest’s French group assessed the toxicity in patients treated with permanent prostate BT using intraoperatively built custom-linked seeds versus loose seeds. They observed that LDR prostate BT based on linked seeds is a safe technique, with comparable toxicity profiles at two years. Hiroaki Kunogi et al. (Juntendo University, Japan) investigated focal LDR prostate BT for 19 low- and...


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