ABSTRACT
More than any other form of brachytherapy, high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy relies on extensive quality assurance to prevent serious errors in patients' treatment plans from becoming serious executed errors. Continuing the discussion begun in chapter 5 in more detail, several features of HDR brachytherapy combine to make this procedure particularly hazardous:
• Few fractions. Most HDR treatment courses deliver the therapy in two to five fractions. Unlike normal external-beam treatments, an error in a single fraction constitutes a significant fraction of the total dose.
