Clinical Reports

Prepared by Dr. Gregory Czarnota

The clinical, research and educational activities of the Radiation Treatment Program at Odette Cancer Centre (Odette), Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (Sunnybrook) continued to be energetically active in 2016-2017. In the past year, Odette was very busy with high clinical volumes of over 7100 new radiation oncology consultations.  With the addition of our Gamma-Knife in 2017, the program has expanded its use of hypofractionated brain stereotactic treatments in addition to its single fraction radiosurgery program.  We have also continued to expand our SBRT expertise with large clinical and research programs within each major disease site (e.g. prostate, pancreas, liver, CNS, breast, etc.). Odette also has an active oligometastases program with multiple on-going clinical trials. Prostate brachytherapy continues to be a priority program and our gynecologic interstitial brachytherapy program continues to grow with the leadership of Dr. Eric Leung. 

From a manpower point of view, there were no retirements or hires within this reporting period, though one position was advertised (and since been filled).  Steve Russell continues as our Manager and Head of Radiotherapy. Dr. William Song concluded his role of Head of Physics in March 2017. A selection committee has been created to recruit a new Head of Physics.

The Program continues to foster its regional leadership role in cancer care. Radiation Oncologists continued to participate in radiation oncology clinics, and multidisciplinary cancer conferences at a large number of academic and community hospitals including the North York General Hospital, MacKenzie Health, Royal Victoria Hospital, The Scarborough Hospital, Rouge Valley Hospital (Centenary Site), Humber River Regional Hospital, Toronto East General Hospital and St. Michael’s Hospital.  

Despite the very competitive grant funding climate, faculty members continued to be successful at capturing funding with over $30 million dollars in external peer-reviewed and industry-supported grants. Faculty at Sunnybrook published over 400 peer-reviewed scholarly articles in 2015, with 161 as primary or senior responsible author. These research grants and publications are detailed elsewhere in the annual report.

Prepared by Dr. John Kim

he Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Radiation Medicine Program (RMP) is now comprised of 36 radiation oncologists, 33 radiation physicists, 160 radiation therapists, 6 advanced practice radiation therapists, 3 nurse practitioners, 1 physician assistant and 115 administrative, technical and support staff. As one of the world’s largest radiation medicine programs, our clinical activities included 8,596 patient consultations with the delivery of 10,626 courses of radiation therapy in fiscal year 2016-2017. The promotion of Quality and Safety continues to be a program priority. In addition to our well established quality and incident reporting program, peer-review site-based rounds for all tumour types, and program-wide monthly quality rounds, we are fully engaged in a University Health Network (UHN)-wide Caring Safely initiative. RMP continues to develop a patient-centred state-of-the-art conformal and image-guided radiation therapy agenda. Expansion of our clinical and research MR-guided activities is planned with the commissioning of a MR-Linac over the next year complimenting the current leading efforts of our GU/GYNE Site Groups in our magnetic resonance-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) suite. RMP is once again undergoing major transformative changes including implementation of a new treatment planning system with many anticipated clinical, research and educational opportunities for the ultimate benefit for our patients. 

Over the past year we have welcomed radiation oncologists Dr. Joelle Helou, Dr. Aisling Barry and Dr. Ali Hosni to RMP. Colleen Dickie was appointed Manager, Strategic Operations, Radiation Therapy. Two RMP Physicists were appointed to UTDRO, Dr. Tony Tadic (Assistant Professor) and Dr. Jette Borg (Lecturer). Dr. Catherine Coolens was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, UTDRO.

Dr. Robert Dinniwell assumed the role of the Chair and Chief of the Division of Radiation Oncology, and Regional Radiation Lead, Department of Oncology at the London Regional Cancer Program, London Health Sciences Centre. Dr. Rob Bristow has joined The University of Manchester as their new Director of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre. 

RMP staff continue to hold major local, provincial, national and international leadership positions. Past year highlights include Dr. Fei-Fei Liu’s reappointment for a second term as Chair, UTDRO. Dr. David Hodgson was appointed as the Medical Director of the Paediatric Oncology Group of Ontario (POGO). 

Research achievements in the past calendar year include obtaining over $35.8 million in peer-reviewed funding and 145 peer-reviewed grants; 233 peer-reviewed publications; with 183 prospective research protocols open; and accruing 11.4% of new patients onto prospective clinical research studies.

Publication highlights include Normand Laperriere, Arjun Sahgal (Odette) and colleagues publishing ‘Short-Course Radiation plus Temozolomide in Elderly Patients with Glioblastoma’ in The New England Journal of Medicine; Charles Catton and team publishing the results of the ‘Randomized Trial of a Hypofractionated Radiation Regimen for the Treatment of Localized Prostate Cancer’ in the Journal of Clinical Oncology; and Dr. Brian O’Sullivan, S. Huang and collaborators publishing ‘Development and validation of a staging system for HPV related oropharyngeal cancer by the International Collaboration on Oropharyngeal cancer Network for Staging (ICON-S): A multicentre cohort study’ in Lancet Oncology. The 8th edition of the UICC TNM Classification of Malignant Tumours was published under the editorial leadership of Dr. James Brierley and UICC past-president Dr. Mary Gospodarowicz with contribution from Dr. Brian O’Sullivan. 

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