DOTmed News is on-site at McCormick Convention Center for the world's leading conference and exhibition for radiation oncology - the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), being held Nov 1-5, 2009.

ASTRO organizers are estimating attendance this year to be about 11,000, with more than 200 exhibitors spanning 108,000 square feet of McCormick Center, and more than 200 concurrent scientific and general sessions offering radiation oncologists, technologists and administrators all the tools and education credits they need to propel their careers forward. This year's ASTRO is convening in conjunction with meetings of the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT), the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO) and the Society of Radiation Oncology Administrators (SROA).




To kick off our coverage of the 51st annual ASTRO meeting, DOTmed spoke with current President Dr. Tim R. Williams, whose insight into the field led to this year's theme: Radiation Oncology in 2020.

[DOTmed: What is the objective of ASTRO's annual meeting?]

Dr. Williams: ASTRO is the organization responsible for the science of radiation oncology. This is the premier meeting for the specialty and it has the largest representation of radiation oncologists in the world. Every year we get about 2,000 abstracts submitted and this year we have about 1,200 that are going to be presented at the meeting.

As the president, I'm allowed to pick the theme for the annual meeting. Last year was our 50th annual meeting, so that was obvious. This year is a little bit different because of all the changes that are ongoing in health care and in radiation oncology as well. The theme I chose was "Radiation Oncology in 2020" or the near-term future of the specialty. For the presidential course I have some mid-career thought leaders moderating sessions and talking about new advances in oncology and therapy and how that is going to impact patient care over the next 10 to 15 years.

Included in that are various things: Nanotechnology is becoming a big deal in our specialty, for example, adaptive therapy with vaccines and targeted therapy, gene therapy and these types of things are going to be rolling out and emerging over the near-term. It is appropriate to lay out the landscape for the specialty so that the dialogue might be started now and people can consider how these changes are going to be affecting ongoing cancer care.

[DOTmed: What is your perspective on the current debate over health care reform?]

Dr. Williams: My contribution to radiation oncology has been through health care policy and economics. We don't pretend to have any solutions or sorcery for how to solve health care financing issues. One thing that we are sure of is that radiation oncology is a very effective therapy and it is very cost-conscious, as well. As far as expenses in our specialty, it has very expensive technology, but it's also very productive from the standpoint of the patient benefit that it yields. Our belief is that even though we can't tell you what the best path is to navigate health care reform, the future of radiation oncology is going to play a very big role in the management of cancer patient care. In the clinical specialty, we get more cancer training than any other specialty. Having four years of pure oncology training, plus a one-year internship, we see a bright future as a clinical practice. As far as whether we are going to be reimbursed on a case-rate basis, episode of care, fee for service, [those are] really not the issues as far as we are concerned. As long as we maintain our focus on quality, cost-effective patient care, the system will support us no matter how the reimbursement is structured.

[DOTmed: Are there any new trends in technology that you are seeing as far as the exhibition goes this year?]

Dr. Williams: I would say that the last five years have been about targeting. Everything in our specialty hinges on navigation and our ability to see targets inside patients and adapt to the motion of these targets during respiration and peristalsis and things like that. We've gotten much more adept at being able to correct for target motion during the time that the beam is actually being directed at the tumor itself. Those technologies have matured to the point where there is almost nothing that we can't target these days. There are very few cases where we find ourselves unable to localize the target inside of a three-dimensional patient volume. That is going to continue to mature over the next few years and demonstrate good results in clinical trials. Beyond that, we are really entering an era of molecular medicine and adaptive therapy and we'll be able to actually assess tumors as they go through a course of therapy and determine whether the sensitivity is being altered by extending factors - whether we need to intensify the dose or back away from the dose to address those normal tissue issues. Each individual patient will be approached differently so that we can take advantage of these new aspects of the tumor milieu or microenvironment. That opens up a whole new area of improvement in tumor control and patient outcomes.

Dr. Williams is a practicing radiation oncologist at Boca Raton Community Hospital in Boca Raton, FL. President-elect Dr. Anthony L. Zietman will begin his 2010 presidency officially at the 2009 ASTRO business meeting Tues., Nov 3. Keep checking back as our coverage of this year's ASTRO annual meeting continues with exhibitor interviews and product launches from the trade show floor.