The World Congress of Brachytherapy took place between 10 July and 16 July 2024 on the famous and scenic Potomac River, close to the capital city of the USA.

Brachytherapy specialists from around the world gathered to share experiences and shape the future landscape of brachytherapy. The theme of the congress this time was “Empowering local brachytherapy through global collaboration”. In the socioeconomic sessions, for which I and my colleague Peter Niehoff were honoured to be part of the scientific committee, varied brachytherapy facilities and education were highlighted from all the continents.

The American perspective on the status of brachytherapy in the USA was prepared by Cathrin Yashar and presented by Melissa Joyner, both of whom are known names in the field and are based at prestigious universities. In the USA, brachytherapy is still used in prostate, gynaecological and breast cancer and more recently in skin cancer, although, overall, a decrease in its use is reported. This may be due to multiple factors, including lack of referral to radiation oncologists from their surgical or medical oncology counterparts, insufficient training and of course, insufficient reimbursement. The number of brachytherapy facilities varies widely in the USA, with the majority being attached to university hospitals and having very large catchment areas.

The European perspective was presented by Professor Niehoff, the head of the brachytherapy health economics in radiation oncology (HERO) group, who showed that there had been a large heterogeneity in responses to the HERO group survey regarding brachytherapy facilities in European countries. This indicated the need to centralise and unify brachytherapy within the EU.

An interesting view on Asian and Australian facilities was presented by Pittaya Dankulchai of the Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. There, brachytherapy is flourishing in terms of the numbers of patients treated, especially for gynaecological tumours. There are extremes in the region in terms of the equipment and expertise that is available at different facilities, equipment ranges from state-of-the-art facilities that use MRI guidance for brachytherapy to centres that have only two-dimensional machines. A similar situation was explained regarding the status of brachytherapy in the Middle East and Africa by Noha Jastaniyah of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Saudi Arabia. In the Middle East, the number of state-of-the-art facilities, which serve a smaller number of patients, is on the rise, while in Africa, there are a few well-equipped centres that have huge catchment areas, and some countries do not even offer brachytherapy.

The session that was dedicated to education was lively and well-attended. The status of education in the USA, as presented by Jill Remick from Emory University, showed that there is a need for more training of young specialists in brachytherapy. A young specialist, Rebecca Krc from the University of Maryland, gave interesting testimony; she is a young doctor in the education programme “300 in 10”. This programme trains specialists in gynaecological oncology intensively over two months. Dr Krc shared with us her very positive experience of the programme and she mentioned an interesting finding: residents who had a background in brachytherapy were regarded as more desirable employees as it was considered that they had team skills.

Regarding the European side, we were very happy to present the EuroBrachytherapy fellowship, which was launched last year and already has four fellows enrolled. The first fellow, Katharina Brück, shared with us her experience of the programme in a witty and motivating way. Through the active participation of the audience, we learned about the fellowship programme in Canada and the lack of such a programme in Brazil, while in Botswana, CT-guided brachytherapy was a combination of collaborative and self-taught processes.

Education was also represented in the proffered papers: Umesh Mahantshetty and Sushil Beriwal presented the results of teaching courses that had been organised by the Association of Radiation Oncologists of India with ESTRO and the subsequent improvement in the outcomes of patients who had been treated with CT-based brachytherapy. Elena Dizendorf presented a paper on the power of organising hands-on workshops in different fields of brachytherapy through the BrachyAcademy, but also the possibility of learning through workshops online, as was proved during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, the congress was a successful meeting that contained good sessions and excellent networking and get-together possibilities.

Alina Sturdza, MD, FRCPC

Medical University of Vienna

Austria

Peter Niehoff, Melissa Joyner, Alina Sturdza, Chairs of the Socioeconomic sessions, and Pittaya Dankulchai invited speaker

The 2024 World Congress of Brachytherapy was held from 10 – 13 July 2024, next to Washington DC, USA