MRI for personalised treatment in oesophageal cancer

Sophie (Elise) Vollenbrock

Research output: ThesisDoctoral ThesisInternal

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Abstract

Patients with oesophageal cancer without metastases are currently treated with five weeks of chemotherapy and radiation followed by surgery. Postoperatively, no tumour is found by the pathologist in 29% of patients. In these patients, not performing surgery is considered. A good clinical selection of complete responders prior to surgery is essential, and this thesis examines the role can be in this for diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI).

DW-MRI has a high sensitivity to the selection of patients with residual tumour after chemoradiation. In addition, DW-MRI resulted in a higher sensitivity than the (currently widely used) technique FDG-PET/CT. Previous studies also described a high chance of false negatives in endoscopies performed by a gastrointestinal-liver-doctor. This implies that patients with residual tumour may be incorrectly not operated on. Therefore, the additional value of DW-MRI in endoscopy/EUS after chemoradiation was examined which led to higher detection of patients with residual tumour.

In conclusion, a promising role for DW-MRI was found for selecting complete responders after chemoradiation, which contributes to the implementation of organ-saving treatment for patients with oesophageal cancer.
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Maastricht University
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Beets - Tan, Regina, Supervisor
  • Bartels-Rutten, A., Co-Supervisor, External person
  • Voncken, F. E. M., Co-Supervisor, External person
Award date9 Dec 2020
Place of PublicationMaastricht
Publisher
Print ISBNs9789464211269
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • oesophageal cancer
  • MRI
  • personalised treatment
  • selection

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