Has anyone heard of this? One of our attendings got the new Wilson/Haffty book. I looked online and found it was not yet available on amazon/barnes and noble, but that you can get it on the jones and bartlett publisher's website (google search wilson haffty jones and bartlett). The book looks very nice, and in spite of myself, I was quite impressed. I think there was a thread about this book before, but it was all theoretical / pre-printing stuff. Well, it's out now and looks like it will be extremely useful. Smaller than perez/gunderson, bigger and more up to date than that other handbook. It's one of those books you could keep by your bedside haha.
New Rad Onc Handbook - Wilson / Haffty
- Thread starter dmax
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Just got my hands on the new Haffty book via Overstock (slightly cheaper than Amazon).
It more closely resembles the Baby Perez than the Roach handbook. Whereas the Roach book goes more for an outline-format, the Haffty book goes more for a textbook-like format. The chapters are well-written and summarize the major points about each site. Major studies are interspersed throughout the chapters in boxes as opposed to put in a separate section at the end of the chapter, and there isn't the "treatment recommendations by stage" like there is in the Roach handbook (one of my favorite features of the Roach). There is a significant amount of material on Physics, Radiobiology, and treatment techniques at the beginning of the book taking up about 200 pages. Brachytherapy and Radioimmunotherapy get their own chapters and the chapter entitled "Useful Tools for Radiation Oncology" has, well, a lot of useful tools, including management of RT toxicities, the RTOG toxicity table, the Emami dose contraints, and even the caloric content of the various nutritional supplements.
What I like👍
More comprehensive than Roach - I feel more comfortable using it for boards study rather than relying on Roach alone. There are some topics here that simply aren't addressed well in Roach.
What I don't like: 👎
Calling this a "handbook" is quite a stretch. It is simply too big and too heavy for a lab coat. Keep it at your desk or work area. Also I think Roach works better as a "quick and dirty" reference, this book requires a bit more searching to find what you're looking for.
Summary👍
A good book that seems aimed to fill a different niche than the Roach, not really as a direct competitor. I plan to use both to study for the boards, with Gundersen to supplement whatever seems skipped over.
It more closely resembles the Baby Perez than the Roach handbook. Whereas the Roach book goes more for an outline-format, the Haffty book goes more for a textbook-like format. The chapters are well-written and summarize the major points about each site. Major studies are interspersed throughout the chapters in boxes as opposed to put in a separate section at the end of the chapter, and there isn't the "treatment recommendations by stage" like there is in the Roach handbook (one of my favorite features of the Roach). There is a significant amount of material on Physics, Radiobiology, and treatment techniques at the beginning of the book taking up about 200 pages. Brachytherapy and Radioimmunotherapy get their own chapters and the chapter entitled "Useful Tools for Radiation Oncology" has, well, a lot of useful tools, including management of RT toxicities, the RTOG toxicity table, the Emami dose contraints, and even the caloric content of the various nutritional supplements.
What I like👍
More comprehensive than Roach - I feel more comfortable using it for boards study rather than relying on Roach alone. There are some topics here that simply aren't addressed well in Roach.
What I don't like: 👎
Calling this a "handbook" is quite a stretch. It is simply too big and too heavy for a lab coat. Keep it at your desk or work area. Also I think Roach works better as a "quick and dirty" reference, this book requires a bit more searching to find what you're looking for.
Summary👍
A good book that seems aimed to fill a different niche than the Roach, not really as a direct competitor. I plan to use both to study for the boards, with Gundersen to supplement whatever seems skipped over.
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Just got my hands on it - looks really really good. It's small enough to fit in your pocket.
Anyone, is the new edition of Hansen's book coming out soon?
P.S. Heard diectly from one of the editors that the new Leibel is ready for the print.
Anyone, is the new edition of Hansen's book coming out soon?
P.S. Heard diectly from one of the editors that the new Leibel is ready for the print.
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I'm half-way through the Wilson/Haffty handbook and I enjoyed it a lot so far. One problem is however that it is not very structured like the Hansen book is, thus you have the problem that the quality of chapters varies alot.
Beyond that I spotted several errors so far, but for a first edition it's normal.
Beyond that I spotted several errors so far, but for a first edition it's normal.
the latter...the chapters in hansen all seem fairly similar...but if there are major discrepancies in the quality of the haffty book, then which chapters do you consider to be pretty good?
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I was a bit disappointed by the Lung Cancer chapter, it seemed to be a bit too short in comparison to other chapters. The context was good, but it was a bit too short.
In the Head&Neck chapter I found a bit too much insight in brachytherapy techniques, especially for advanced cancer. This is probably just a European-American difference, but we hardly do any brachytherapy here for head and neck. The only cases that are usually treated with brachytherapy are recurrent tumors and even then most radiation oncologists are afraid to do it, because of the risk of serious side effects especially on bone and cartilage.
The Pacreas chapter was a bit too long as well for what I consider important to radiation oncology. Radiotherapy of pacreas cancer is done even more seldom noawadays than 10 years ago, especially after ESPAC-1. I didn't like the fact that the authors kept describing those old-style big fields as standard treatment. We have no chance of controlling pacreatic cancer with radiation therapy and I firmly believe that radiation therapy's role is solely palliation and in extreme cases additive therapy for a very small percentage of patients (R1-Resections in very fit patients with no N+). Palliation means smaller fields for less side effects and not irradiation half of the abdomen.
Other than that the book is great and it offers a very helpful "bridge" between Hansen and monsters like Perez, etc. For someone who's already in the 3rd or 4th year of residency Hansen starts becoming too superficial in every day's work.
In the Head&Neck chapter I found a bit too much insight in brachytherapy techniques, especially for advanced cancer. This is probably just a European-American difference, but we hardly do any brachytherapy here for head and neck. The only cases that are usually treated with brachytherapy are recurrent tumors and even then most radiation oncologists are afraid to do it, because of the risk of serious side effects especially on bone and cartilage.
The Pacreas chapter was a bit too long as well for what I consider important to radiation oncology. Radiotherapy of pacreas cancer is done even more seldom noawadays than 10 years ago, especially after ESPAC-1. I didn't like the fact that the authors kept describing those old-style big fields as standard treatment. We have no chance of controlling pacreatic cancer with radiation therapy and I firmly believe that radiation therapy's role is solely palliation and in extreme cases additive therapy for a very small percentage of patients (R1-Resections in very fit patients with no N+). Palliation means smaller fields for less side effects and not irradiation half of the abdomen.
Other than that the book is great and it offers a very helpful "bridge" between Hansen and monsters like Perez, etc. For someone who's already in the 3rd or 4th year of residency Hansen starts becoming too superficial in every day's work.
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Frankly, I think "firmly believing" one way or another about the role of radonc in definitive panc. cancer treatment is dangerous. I can site just as many things to suggest it helps (such as studies showing major violation of Radonc delivery in studies leads to poorer outcome) and evidence that negative studies such as ESPAC are seriously flawed. Im not saying its definitively helpful. And its a difficult treatment to endure. But the jury is out. sorry off topic.
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I guess you are right. I was a bit too polarized in my comments, but that's maybe because the handbook was pretty polarized as well.
I finished the Peds chapter today and I have to say it was ok. Just ok. I didn't like the fact that many subjects concerning dose, fractionation, etc were not covered. I also didn't like the fact that IMRT was propagated for children, when there are some critic voices saying IMRT aint that good for kids because of a bigger part of body receiving low-dose irradiation (leading to secondary cancers in 20 years or so).
