Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Dear Friends and Brachytherapy Fellows,

It makes no difference that we have Summer in Europe, Winter in Australia, etc. Despite the holidays, our Publishing House is fully operating and working perfectly. Numerous papers are being submitted, and I encourage our devoted Editors to distribute the manuscripts to many of our worldwide reviewers. I would like to thank all the people engaged in creating the “Journal of Contemporary Brachytherapy” – our high-quality platform for brachytherapy research presentation. Our joint efforts result in fruitful and constructive readership feedback, cite scores, and all relevant indexes that are stable or gradually improving. Congratulations to all! What a splendid job!
The JCB 4/2021 is very diverse and exciting, and contains nine clinical papers, exceptional one physics’ contribution, one technical note, one case report, one review, and two educational articles. To start with, I would like to underline two papers from Educational Corner. Canadian group prepared a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the current state of additive manufacturing (3D printing) in superficial brachytherapy (plesiotherapy). I am sure that after reading this article, you would feel like 3D printing! In the second paper, Artur Bezugly et al. summarize all the most relevant information on high-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) in skin oncology. HFUS can provide essential information on tumor characteristics and influence proper clinical decisions. This article is very interesting and informative; therefore its’ figures are printed on the cover.
The current issue begins with a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis on high-dose-rate (HDR) fractionated monotherapy for localized prostate cancer by Eric Anderson et al. (Los Angeles, USA), yet another voice in favor of brachytherapy (BT) associated with high-rate of disease control and low-rate of toxicity. Low-dose-rate (LDR)-BT is also very effective, but Sophie Robin et al. (Lyon, France) pay attention to the impact of meeting the eligibility criteria according to EAU/ESTRO/SIOG guidelines on prostate cancer relapse-free survival. Not properly met criteria means worse patient’s perspective for a cure – to be noted. Indian Brachytherapy Society members wrote on patient-reported quality of life (QOL) with interstitial APBI and WBRT. They conveyed propensity score matching for various factors, and found similar QOL in both groups. Investigators from China...


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