Author: Nathaniel Haas, David Pearson 👨🔬
Affiliation: University of Toledo 🌍
Purpose: For external beam treatments for prostate cancer, we ask patients to attend treatments with their bladders full. A full bladder has been shown to reduce the dose to the bladder and bowels for external beam treatments. By communicating the importance and benefits of having a full bladder to patients and giving them weekly feedback, we hope to improve patient cooperation in attending treatment with a full bladder.
Methods: During the subjects CT simulation, we hold our initial education session where we discuss the benefits of having a full bladder for treatment and lay out a routine of drinking water before treatment. Once treatment starts, we hold weekly meetings with patients where we discuss the patients' bladder volume during treatment. We do this by showing them their cone beam CTs and compare them with their simulation CT. To collect data, we contour the patients' scans in MIM to collect the bladder volume from each scan. Subjects are then compared to our controls.
Results: As of now, we have seen much more consistent bladder volume in our subjects compared to controls. Subjects have also consistently had a bladder volume greater than that at the time of their CT simulation.
Conclusion: While we have only had a few active participants so far, initial results show promise that education and feedback sessions not only help to have patients have a larger bladder volume at the time of their CT simulation, but also to have a more consistent bladder volume from day to day.