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. 2021 Feb 28;13(2):e13606.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.13606.

Implementation of Cardiac Stereotactic Radiotherapy: From Literature to the Linac

Rachel M Glicksman  1 , Abhishek Bhaskaran  2 , Kumaraswamy Nanthakumar  2 , Patricia Lindsay  1 , Catherine Coolens  1 , Leigh Conroy  1 , Daniel Letourneau  1 , Benjamin H Lok  1 , Meredith Giuliani  1 , Andrew Hope  1
Affiliations

Implementation of Cardiac Stereotactic Radiotherapy: From Literature to the Linac

Rachel M Glicksman et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

Stereotactic radiotherapy (SBRT) has been applied to treat cardiac arrhythmias, but our institution had not yet implemented this technique. Here, we explain how we used implementation science and knowledge translation to provide cardiac SBRT to a critically ill patient with malignancy-associated refractory ventricular tachycardia. We reviewed the critical factors that enabled the implementation of this urgent treatment, such as the context of the implementation, the characteristics of the intervention, and the stakeholders. These principles can be used by other radiation programs to implement novel treatments in urgent settings, where the gold standard process of planning and developing policies and protocols is not possible.

Keywords: arrhythmia; cardiac; implementation science; knowledge translation; sabr; sbrt.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared financial relationships, which are detailed in the next section.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Timeline of implementation from Radiation Oncology consultation to treatment delivery.
CICU: cardiac intensive care unit; SBRT: stereotactic radiotherapy; 4D-CT: 4-dimensional computed tomography
Figure 2
Figure 2. Sagittal representative slice of the cardiac SBRT plan.
Contours: Orange: ITV; light blue: PTV; maroon: heart; purple: left lung Isodoses: Dark blue: 100% isodose line (25 Gy); purple: 95% isodose line (23.75 Gy); brown: 50% isodose line (12.5 Gy) SBRT: stereotactic radiotherapy; ITV: internal target volume
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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