ArticleJournal of applied clinical medical physics2021
Uncertainty in the positioning of patients receiving treatment for brain metastases and wearing surgical mask underneath thermoplastic mask during COVID-19 crisis.
Article in Journal of applied clinical medical physics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Significance of positional correction of planned couch angles with the ExacTrac system.Reports of practical oncology and radiotherapy : journal of Greatpoland Cancer Center in Poznan and Polish Society of Radiation Oncology · 2025Article
- Analyzing the patient isocenter positional accuracy with portal imaging acquired at different gantry angles and its dosimetrical impact on the dose delivery for head and neck cancers.Precision radiation oncology · 2024Article
- The impact of COVID-19 on a high-volume incident learning system: A retrospective analysis.Journal of applied clinical medical physics · 2022Article
- Evaluation of the Position Error of Wearing Surgical Masks During Radiotherapy in Head and Neck Cancer Patients.Cancer management and research · 2022Article
- Covid-19 and radiotherapy: a systematic review after 2 years of pandemic.Clinical and translational imaging · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Thermoplastic masks, used along with surgical masks, enable immobilization methods to reduce the risk of infection in patients undergoing intracranial stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic radiotherapy (SRS/SRT) during the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of thermoplastic mask immobilization with a surgical mask using an ExacTrac system. Twelve patients each with brain metastases were immobilized using a thermoplastic mask and a surgical mask and only a thermoplastic mask. Two x-ray images were acquired to correct (XC) and verify (XV) the patient's position at a couch angle of 0°. Subsequently, the XC and XV images were acquired at each planned couch angle for non-coplanar beams. When the position errors were detected after couch rotation for non-coplanar beams, the errors were corrected at each planned couch angle until a clinically acceptable tolerance was attained. The position errors in the translational and rotational directions (vertical, lateral, longitudinal, pitch, roll, and yaw) were retrospectively investigated using data from the ExacTrac system database. A standard deviation of XC translational and rotational position errors with and without a surgical mask in the lateral (1.52 vs 2.07 mm), longitudinal (1.59 vs 1.87 mm), vertical (1.00 vs 1.73 mm), pitch (0.99 vs 0.79°), roll (1.24 vs 0.68°), and yaw (1.58 vs 0.90°) directions were observed at a couch angle of 0°. Most of patient positioning errors were less than 1.0 mm or 1.0° after the couch was rotated to the planned angle for non-coplanar beams. The overall absolute values of the translational and rotational XV position errors with and without the surgical mask were less than 0.5 mm and 0.5°, respectively. This study showed that a thermoplastic mask with a surgical mask is a feasible immobilization technique for brain SRS/SRT patients using the ExacTrac system.
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