Editorial: Out-of-field second primary cancer induction Dosimetry and modelling

Abstract

Second primary cancer induction is a growing concern, particularly for the younger cancer patient population with a longer life expectancy, as demonstrated by the increasing number of publications on the topic. Still, there is much work to do (1), such as assessing problems associated with the dosimetry under no reference conditions (particularly in proton treatments) or the presence of mixed-fields. Additionally, due to the poor performance of commercial treatment planning systems (TPS) in stray dose calculations for photon (2) and proton radiotherapy (RT), the development and implementation of computational tools are needed for out-of-field dose estimation in a systematic way. Thus, dosimetric information might be part of databases for cancer patients treated with modern RT techniques together with detrimental outcomes such as second primary cancers. The latter will improve existing risk models, which should also be considered during RT plan optimization.

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