Handbook of Palliative Radiation Therapy

The first practical guide to palliative care in radiation oncology in which the editors have assembled a team of leading radiation oncologists to write this how-to on planning and administering single-fractionated and hypofractionated radiotherapy for end-of-life cancer care. The handbook begins with several chapters on the background and efficacy of palliative radiation therapy, along with crucial information on patient selection and assessment of life expectancy. Following these introductory chapters, the bulk of the book contains chapters on site-specific malignancies, containing comprehensive literature reviews, treatment plans, toxicity information, and symptom management. More than 70 colour images enhance the chapter text. As the field of end-of-life care grows in our ageing society, this handbook will be an essential tool for anyone assessing patients and designing treatment plans for palliative radiation therapy. Key Features: Additional chapters cover emergent treatments, system and software troubleshooting, and various circumstantial barriers to treatment. Chapters contain decision trees, cases, clinical pearls, and other elements to bring out key points in the text. Discusses strategies for dealing with patients who have significant symptoms, such as bleeding, dysphagia, airway obstruction, and other painful and debilitating side effects. Includes reviews of tools for assessing life expectancy including Recursive Partitioning Analysis, Palliative Performance Index, and other predictive models such as Number of Risk Factors score.