Our First Research Study on Upright Set-Ups for Breast Radiotherapy

Introduction

Breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide and radiotherapy is a key aspect of its treatment. Yet it has always been challenging to achieve clinically suitable and reproducible body positions for breast radiotherapy, particularly for women with large breast sizes.

The Study

Prof Heidi Probst and Jo McNamara from Sheffield Hallam University joined Leo Cancer Care’s Tracy Underwood and Jemma Nunn in conducting a research study considering how Eve, (our special treatment chair), might be used to treat patients requiring breast radiotherapy, upright.

From left to right: Dr Tracy Underwood, Jemma Nunn, Jo McNamara and Prof Heidi Probst

8 volunteers helped us to test potential set-ups and body positions for upright breast radiotherapy. These ladies first came in for bra fittings in January. For each person, we then sourced custom radiotherapy bras from Sheffield Hallam University (Support 4 All bras) and commercially available Chabner XRT® Radiation Bras from CIVCO Radiotherapy™.    When the volunteers came back in, together we tested out various body positions on Eve, as well as the treatment bras.

It will take us some time to analyse all the results, but the initial data looks very promising. The bras lifted the breasts in the upright set-ups. With Vac-Lok™ bags and a Monarch™ overhead arm positioner from CIVCO Radiotherapy, we were able to position volunteers effectively. The Leo team also learnt from every volunteer, many of whom had brilliant suggestions to improve the set-up.

Thank You

We’re extremely grateful to the volunteers who helped us with this study and to Prof Heidi Probst and Jo McNamara from Sheffield Hallam University – it was an honour to work with you all. Special thanks also to the team at CIVCO RT who went above and beyond to provide us with equipment for the study, and to The Drag Queen Closet who kindly provided us with breast prostheses to use in preliminary testing.

Exciting Times Ahead

We will collaborate with Sheffield Hallam University and CIVCO Radiotherapy on the analyses. In parallel, we will keep refining our ideas for new set-ups and we are conducting discussions with former radiotherapy patients who have first-hand experience of surgery followed by radiotherapy for breast cancer. We want to fully consider patient comfort as we work to improve breast treatments.

This piece was written by Dr Tracy Underwood from Leo Cancer Care, if you have any questions you can contact her at tracy.underwood@leocancercare.com