Clinical Research Directory

DENTOFACIAL-PBT Stage 2 - Feasibility Study

What is the health problem? Proton beam therapy (PBT), a type of radiotherapy treatment, can be especially beneficial to children and teenagers with cancer. PBT works by damaging cancer cells, but it can also damage healthy parts of the body nearby. This can include the teeth and jaws if the cancer is in the head and neck region. Unfortunately, the investigators do not yet fully understand the potential side effects of PBT on the teeth or jaws. What is the aim? The DENTOFACIAL-PBT research project aims to learn about the side effects to the teeth and jaws in children treated with PBT. This stage of the research aims to determine how frequently issues ('toxicities') in the development of the teeth and growth of the jaws have occurred in previously treated patients. DENTOFACIAL-PBT is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. How is the researched being approached? The investigators will ask head and neck childhood cancer survivors treated with PBT overseas or in Manchester to support this research. Surveys will be sent initially, asking questions about their teeth and jaws after treatment. If interested, these survivors can be involved in the next part of this stage, which is a mixed-methods feasibility study. This will involve online interviews and dental assessments with some and the collection of dental information from a participant's dentist. Radiation dose to the teeth and the jaw bones will then be linked to any side effects seen. What will be the outcome? The information gained in this study will allow the research team to look at how age, location and amount of dose given affects the toxicities seen. Information learnt will help develop the final stage of the DENTOFACIAL-PBT study. In this, a new toxicity reporting tool will be developed which aims to improve the communication between dentists, doctors, and cancer patients.

Efficacy of Postoperative Radiotherapy for Atypical Meningioma Without Venous Sinus Invasion After Gross-total Resection

Postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy is a key component of comprehensive treatment of meningioma. However, for atypical meningioma after total resection, there is still a huge controversy in patients who need adjuvant radiotherapy after surgery. Many scholars have focused on this problem and carried out some small-scale retrospective studies, but they have contradictory results. Some of the studies found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy could not improve the prognosis of patients, but was questioned because the sample size was too small, resulting in insignificant results, while other studies found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy can improve progression free survival. A study based on the National Cancer Database found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy and gross tumor resection are associated with a good prognosis. A recent meta-analysis enrolled a total of 757 patients and found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy reduced the risk of tumor recurrence but did not improve survival time. Our team reviewed the meningioma data in the SEER database and conducted a study previously. The study found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy did not improve the overall survival of these patients. The relevant research results were recently published in Frontiers in oncology. We further reviewed and summarized the single-center data of our hospital and found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy could not improve the progression free survival and overall survival of patients. Besides, we also performed a meta-analysis and found that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy had a trend to improve progression-free survival, but there was no statistical difference. Because there are many deficiencies in previous researches, and the research results are also contradictory, it is still unclear whether patients with atypical meningioma who have undergone gross total resection can benefit from postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy. Further high quality clinical trials is still needed to be conducted in order to guide the postoperative care of patients. Therefore, we intend to conduct this multicenter randomized controlled trial to determine the value of postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy in patients with atypical meningioma who underwent gross total resection.