The ASTRO annual meeting is just a few short weeks away. In addition to the SPRO 9th Annual Meeting on Sunday evening, we would like to highlight the palliative care sessions that will occur during the main meeting. Congratulations to our many SPRO members who will be involved in these sessions!
ASCO honors Dr. Tracy Balboni with the 2021 Walther Cancer Foundation Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Endowed Award. Dr. Tracy Balboni, MD, MPH, FAAHPM, was honored with the 2021 Walter Cancer Foundation Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Endowed Award. Established in 2017, this award recognizes a leader who has made a significant contribution to palliative and supportive care in oncology through the prevention, assessment and management of cancer- and treatment-related suffering. Dr. Balboni is a Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, Program Director of the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, and Clinical Director of the Dana-Farber/Brigham and…
On October 25th, 2018, in association with the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s 60th Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, SPRO held its 5th Annual Meeting. The event was a great success, with 45 members in attendance. Two inaugural awards were announced: the Lifetime Service Award and the Rising Star Award. A report of the Annual Meeting can be found at: http://apm.amegroups.com/article/view/23985/22767
On October 18, the Society for Palliative Radiation Oncology (SPRO) held its annual meeting in San Antonio, TX, in conjunction with the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting. Dr. Stephen Lutz welcomed everyone to the meeting and reviewed the initiatives that have been undertaken since SPRO was formally introduced one year before. He then introduced speakers in three categories: Research, Education, and Advocacy. For clinical research, Dr. Chad Tang from MD Anderson presented the Prognostic Index for Spine Metastases (PRISM), a measure that aims to categorize patients with excellent or poor prognosis following stereotactic spine radiosurgery and to…
Tell us a little about yourself:
I grew up with four sisters in a small city in Florida called Ocala. With my dad as a chiropractor and my mom as a pharmacist, I became interested in health care at a young age. I also loved math and physics, so I decided to study biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. I ultimately decided to go into medicine because I saw how special and privileged the patient-doctor relationship was.
Why did you go into radiation oncology?
As a senior biomedical engineering student, I took a design course in which I was randomly grouped with a radiation oncologist and a head and neck surgeon. We worked on a project using intraoperative point tracking and deformable image registration to better delineate post-operative tongue resection margins, with a goal of minimizing the volume of high dose radiation targets. I instantly loved radiation oncology from an engineering perspective. When I started medical school at Vanderbilt University, I began shadowing in the radiation oncology department, and I also loved the clinical aspects of the specialty. I was drawn to how radiation oncology exists at the intersection of advanced technology and human experience.
Why were you interested in joining SPRO?
I became interested in palliative care as a medical student when I learned the importance of focusing not only on quantity of life but also quality of life. I had the opportunity to observe the implementation of an inpatient palliative radiation oncology service, and I saw the added value of having a dedicated radiation oncologist who can spend time discussing goals of care and prognosis with patients. I was interested in joining SPRO to continue learning how to best serve patients with incurable cancers.
Feel free to share on any projects that you have been working on that may be of interest to our members
Recently, I collaborated with the Department of Radiology to create a diagnostic CT protocol that can be ordered after-hours, when CT simulation is unavailable, and utilized to plan urgent radiation treatments. Currently, I am developing a surveillance protocol for patients after completing palliative radiation for painful bone metastases, with aims to catch new or recurrent sites of bone pain and prevent missed opportunities for additional palliative treatments.
Favorite quote?
“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
– Henry David Thoreau
