Palliative VMAT: when is a plan good enough?

Facilitator(s): Kaj Bayley, Sally McInnes

Synopsis: Palliative VMAT is increasingly used despite limited published guidance on technique selection and planning priorities. Using de-identified thoracic, abdominal, pelvic, spine and reirradiation cases, participants will review plans against patient condition, clinical priorities, expected benefit, treatment burden, target coverage, organ-at-risk priorities, imaging and deliverability. They will compare approaches, decide when added complexity meaningfully improves the plan, and recommend whether plans should be accepted, modified, or rejected. The workshop develops practical plan-review and decision-making skills for use in participants’ own departments.

Learning outcomes: 

• Prioritise planning decisions according to patient condition, clinical priorities, expected benefit and treatment burden.
• Justify isocentre placement, arc arrangement and beam geometry for representative palliative cases.
• Determine when further optimisation is likely to meaningfully improve the plan and when added complexity offers little clinical value.