• The patient’s subjective assessment of the upright positioning was at least as good and for some items even better than in the supine position.

Niek Schrueder, Chief Scientific Officer at Leo Cancer Care, said: “The findings reported here are complementary to the results from a recent study comparing male pelvic organ shapes and positions between the supine and upright positions. Considering these early promising factors, treating pelvic targets (male and female cancers) in the upright orientation might become the preferred method in the very near future.”

Evaluating stability and comfort


A total of 16 patients (eight men/eight women) with prostate, bladder, rectal, endometrial, or cervix/uterine corpus tumors were included in this study which took place between October 2021 and June 2022. Their ages ranged between 35 and 81 years; heights ranging between 152 to 182 cm and patient weights were between 41 and 107 kg. The patients were all at various stages of their treatments including chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The report recorded that the patients gave favourable responses in terms of comfort in the up-right positioner and the ease of set up. A total of 87% of patients felt all round comfortable or very comfortable in the upright position compared to 73% for the supine position.

Thirteen patients (87%) felt stable or very stable in the upright position while 10 patients, (67%) said the same for the supine position. Meanwhile, 100% of patients found it comfortable or very comfortable to breathe in the upright position compared to 87% in the supine position.

In terms of setup, 87% of patients indicated that it was easy or very easy to be setup in the upright position – some naturally positioning themselves without adjustment from the Radiation Therapist, while 94% considered it to be easy or very easy to get out of the upright position.

Using the upright solution during these studies also required no use of skin marks (small tattoo dots used to align patients with the lasers during each session of treatment). The repeat setups were performed only using the immobilization devices and the upright positioner, including the coordinates of different parts of the positioning system.

The study was conducted by Sophie Boisbouvier, Radiation Therapist at the Centre Léon Bérard – Leo Cancer Care’s partner organization.

Regarding the study findings and the future of how radiation therapy delivery might change So-phie Boisbouvier said: “I think the study has shown that we can treat the patients with pelvic can-cers in an upright position.

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