IAEA Trains Asians in Advanced Cancer Treatment

Radiotherapy professionals from 10 Asian countries have completed an IAEA training course on ultra-hypofractionated radiotherapy - a way of treating cancer with ionizing radiation that reduces treatment times, potentially lowering costs. Held in Malaysia in August with the expert support of the region's Rays of Hope Anchor Centres , the course trained participants to adopt advanced radiotherapy techniques as a standard of care.

"Malaysia was honoured to host this regional training course, which unites global radiotherapy professionals to strengthen expertise in ultra-hypofractionated radiotherapy," said Norhidayu Salimin, clinical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute of Malaysia and the course's director. "It marks an important step forward for radiotherapy services in the region, by expanding access to treatment that can improve outcomes and the quality of life for cancer patients."

Despite progress over the past decade in expanding global access to radiotherapy as an essential cancer treatment, equipment and workforce-related challenges continue to limit timely and effective care. Resource-sparing approaches such as hypofractionation, which delivers fewer but higher doses of radiation per daily treatment session over a shorter time frame, can help address global care gaps. Safe and effective for a range of cancers, hypofractionated radiotherapy has been associated with increased treatment precision, reduced treatment times and lower costs.

"The IAEA-led Lancet Oncology Commission on Radiotherapy and Theranostics demonstrated how such an approach could extend radiotherapy access to an additional 2.2 million patients with breast and prostate cancer while unlocking billions in cost-savings," noted May Abdel-Wahab, Director of the IAEA Division of Human Health. "A 50 percent substitution of conventional radiotherapy with hypofractionated radiotherapy could result in global savings of $2.76 billion in treating these two cancers alone."

With cancer incidence and mortality projected to double across Asia over the next 25 years, the IAEA's technical cooperation and human health programmes organized a regional course to equip specialists from across the region with the knowledge and skills needed to safely and effectively deploy these techniques. Thirty radiation oncologists, radiation therapists and medical physicists from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam gathered in Putrajaya, Malaysia, for a week of in-depth instruction.

Through a series of lectures and practicals, participants deepened their understanding of ultra-hypofractionated radiotherapy's clinical applications, from patient consideration and selection to dose calculation and treatment planning. Experts from IAEA Rays of Hope Anchor Centres in Jordan, India and the Republic of Korea joined as lecturers, sharing their experiences in implementing ultra-hypofractionation in diverse healthcare settings.

"Ultra-hypofractionated radiotherapy is rapidly becoming the standard of care worldwide, and participating as an expert in this IAEA regional training course was an invaluable opportunity to share clinical experience, evidence-based practices and technology," said Anoud Alnsour, a radiation oncologist at King Hussein Cancer Center - Jordan's Anchor Centre. "This course highlights the power of collaboration in bridging the radiotherapy access gap and advancing equitable, sustainable cancer care across the region."

The course also featured sessions tailored to each member of the radiotherapy team. Radiation oncologists sharpened their contouring skills in sessions on cancers and tumours of the brain, liver, lung and prostate. Radiation therapists practiced patient positioning and immobilization on various machines. Medical physicists studied processes critical for ensuring the safety, accuracy and effectiveness of treatments, including commissioning, quality assurance, four-dimensional imaging planning and small field dosimetry.

For cancers of the lung, liver, kidney, prostate, pancreas, colon and other organs, ultra-hypofractionation can be carried out via stereotactic body radiation therapy, which delivers highly concentrated, targeted radiation doses to individual tumours. In cases of brain and spine tumours, ultra-hypofractionation is performed with stereotactic radiosurgery.

"This course has been invaluable. It provided us with practical guidance and the opportunity to learn from other countries' experiences," said Koeurn Chhoeurt, a medical physicist at Calmette Hospital in Cambodia. "We now feel confident to begin implementing stereotactic body radiation therapy and stereotactic radiosurgery techniques in our centre as a standard of care."