The yearly World Congress of Brachytherapy is an international gathering of physicists, physicians, and other health care providers engaged in the practice of brachytherapy. The Congress is held by the American Brachytherapy Society, a non-profit organization that seeks to provide insight and research into the use of brachytherapy in malignant and benign conditions.

Brachytherapy is an internal type of radiation therapy that is applied either permanently in rice-like seeds or temporarily through thin tubes called catheters. The seeds and catheters are placed inside patients’ bodies, where they deliver radiation to destroy cancerous or benign tumors. Brachytherapy is also used to prevent the reclogging of coronary arteries that have been cleared by angioplasty.

One of the limiting factors in using brachytherapy for the treatment of breast cancer is the effect the radiation has on the skin in the area that is treated. The goal of the Department of Radiation Oncology’s research is to better measure the dosages of radiation that are used around the seeds involved in brachytherapy so that the treatment can be more accurately and safely given to patients.

Joseph Hanley, Ph.D., director of medical physics for the Department of Radiation Oncology, will present a poster on “Measurement of Skin Dose for MammoSite Patients Using Gafchromic EBT Film.” Two other researchers from the Department of Radiation Oncology – Loren Godfrey, M.D., director of brachytherapy, and John Napoli, M.S., medical physicist -- collaborated with Dr. Hanley and with researchers at the University of Wisconsin and one of the world’s foremost authorities on radio seed dosimetry, Sou-Tung Chiu-Tsao, Ph.D., on two other studies that were accepted for presentation at the World Congress: “Radiochromic Film Dosimetry for Model 6711- I-125 Seed with Special Emphasis on Eye Plaque Application” and “Skin Dose Measurement for a High-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy Treatment: A Phantom Study Using Radiochromic Film Dosimetry.”

“We look forward to presenting our research and networking with our colleagues from all over the world at the Congress so that together we can advance the science of brachytherapy for the benefit of our patients,” says Dr. Hanley. He has been at The Cancer Center since 2002 and has conducted research in various types of radiation therapy throughout his career. He received his doctorate in physics from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1992, and he completed a postdoctoral clinical fellowship in medical physics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in 1995.

“We are proud of Dr. Hanley and his colleagues in radiation oncology and medical physics for their cutting-edge studies into treatment uncertainties and for continuously looking for better ways to provide treatment for all our patients with cancer,” says Andrew L. Pecora, M.D., chairman and executive administrative director of The Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center.

The Department of Radiation Oncology at The Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center is one of the largest in New Jersey and in 2007 recorded 2,900 patient visits. Here, brachytherapy is used to treat prostate, breast, brain, skin, and gynecologic cancers and sarcomas. In addition to brachytherapy, the department provides the most sophisticated radiation therapy treatment available today, including TomoTherapy, intensity modulated radiation therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy, and the newest type of brachytherapy, accelerated partial breast irradiation, which accomplishes treatment for breast cancer in five days instead of the seven weeks required of traditional external beam radiation therapy.