Prevalence of sunscreen use and sunburn in Greek athletes: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Athletes participating in outdoor sports are in a high-risk category for prolonged sun exposure. This study investigates whether swimmers and beach volleyball athletes adopt appropriate measures to protect their skin from the sun. Sunscreens play a key role in protecting the skin from solar radiation and preventing premature aging. The study assesses the frequency of sunscreen use and the incidence of sunburn among athletes. METHODS: Athletes completed a self-administered questionnaire regarding their sun protection and exposure habits. Participants aged 9 to 60 years, engaged in swimming (N.=1047) and beach volleyball (N.=785), were included in this study. RESULTS: In the group of swimmers (N.=858), a notable percentage never used sunscreen, and among those who did, (N.=137), natural products were predominantly applied. Gender differences revealed a significantly higher sunscreen usage (P<0.001) among female swimmers compared to males. Among beach volleyball athletes, sunscreen use was notably higher (90%), with 55.6% applying natural sunscreen and 44.4% opting for non-natural alternatives. Regarding the incidence of sunburn, the occurrence among both male and female swimmers was observed to be very low. Among those with sunburn, females exhibited a significantly higher frequency than males (P<0.001). Conversely, in beach volleyball athletes, sunburn affected a higher percentage of males (49.8%) than females (43.9%). CONCLUSIONS: Sunscreen utilization is notably insufficient among athletes, reflecting a limited awareness of the potential risks associated with sun exposure, even though they frequently suffer from sunburn. This heightened susceptibility places them at an increased risk of developing skin lesions. Initiating and disseminating awareness campaigns that specifically emphasize the importance of sunscreen use within the outdoor sports community is imperative.

4D analysis of influence of patient movement and anatomy alteration on the quality of 3D U/S-based prostate HDR brachytherapy treatment delivery.

PURPOSE: Modern HDR brachytherapy treatment for prostate cancer based on the 3D ultrasound (U/S) plays increasingly important role. The purpose of this study is to investigate possible patient movement and anatomy alteration between the clinical image set acquisition, made after the needle implantation, and the patient irradiation and their influence on the quality of treatment. METHODS: The authors used 3D U/S image sets and the corresponding treatment plans based on a 4D-treatment planning procedure: plans of 25 patients are obtained right after the needle implantation (clinical plan is based on this 3D image set) and just before and after the treatment delivery. The authors notice the slight decrease of treatment quality with increase of time gap between the clinical image set acquisition and the patient irradiation. 4D analysis of dose-volume-histograms (DVHs) for prostate: CTV1 = PTV, and urethra, rectum, and bladder as organs at risk (OARs) and conformity index (COIN) is presented, demonstrating the effect of prostate, OARs, and needles displacement. RESULTS: The authors show that in the case that the patient body movement/anatomy alteration takes place, this results in modification of DVHs and radiobiological parameters, hence the plan quality. The observed average displacement of needles (1 mm) and of prostate (0.57 mm) is quite small as compared with the average displacement noted in several other reports [A. A. Martinez et al., Int. J. Radiat. Oncol., Biol., Phys. 49(1), 61-69 (2001); S. J. Damore et al., Int. J. Radiat. Oncol., Biol., Phys. 46(5), 1205-1211 (2000); P. J. Hoskin et al., Radiotherm. Oncol. 68(3), 285-288 (2003); E. Mullokandov et al., Int. J. Radiat. Oncol., Biol., Phys. 58(4), 1063-1071 (2004)] in the literature. CONCLUSIONS: Although the decrease of quality of dosimetric and radiobiological parameters occurs, this does not cause clinically unacceptable changes to the 3D dose distribution, according to our clinical protocol.

Effect of using different U/S probe Standoff materials in image geometry for interventional procedures: the example of prostate.

PURPOSE: This study investigates the distortion of geometry of catheters and anatomy in acquired U/S images, caused by utilizing various stand-off materials for covering a transrectal bi-planar ultrasound probe in HDR and LDR prostate brachytherapy, biopsy and other interventional procedures. Furthermore, an evaluation of currently established water-bath based quality assurance (QA) procedures is presented. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Image acquisitions of an ultrasound QA setup were carried out at 5 MHz and 7 MHz. The U/S probe was covered by EA 4015 Silicone Standoff kit, or UA0059 Endocavity balloon filled either with water or one of the following: 40 ml of Endosgel(®), Instillagel(®), Ultraschall gel or Space OAR™ gel. The differences between images were recorded. Consequently, the dosimetric impact of the observed image distortion was investigated, using a tissue equivalent ultrasound prostate phantom - Model number 053 (CIRS Inc., Norfolk, VA, USA). RESULTS: By using the EA 4015 Silicone Standoff kit in normal water with sound speed of 1525 m/s, a 3 mm needle shift was observed. The expansion of objects appeared in radial direction. The shift deforms also the PTV (prostate in our case) and other organs at risk (OARs) in the same way leading to overestimation of volume and underestimation of the dose. On the other hand, Instillagel(®) and Space OAR™ "shrinks" objects in an ultrasound image for 0.65 mm and 0.40 mm, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The use of EA 4015 Silicone Standoff kit for image acquisition, leads to erroneous contouring of PTV and OARs and reconstruction and placement of catheters, which results to incorrect dose calculation during prostate brachytherapy. Moreover, the reliability of QA procedures lies mostly in the right temperature of the water used for accurate simulation of real conditions of transrectal ultrasound imaging.

Radiobiological evaluation of the influence of dwell time modulation restriction in HIPO optimized HDR prostate brachytherapy implants.

PURPOSE: One of the issues that a planner is often facing in HDR brachytherapy is the selective existence of high dose volumes around some few dominating dwell positions. If there is no information available about its necessity (e.g. location of a GTV), then it is reasonable to investigate whether this can be avoided. This effect can be eliminated by limiting the free modulation of the dwell times. HIPO, an inverse treatment plan optimization algorithm, offers this option. In treatment plan optimization there are various methods that try to regularize the variation of dose non-uniformity using purely dosimetric measures. However, although these methods can help in finding a good dose distribution they do not provide any information regarding the expected treatment outcome as described by radiobiology based indices. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The quality of 12 clinical HDR brachytherapy implants for prostate utilizing HIPO and modulation restriction (MR) has been compared to alternative plans with HIPO and free modulation (without MR). All common dose-volume indices for the prostate and the organs at risk have been considered together with radiobiological measures. The clinical effectiveness of the different dose distributions was investigated by calculating the response probabilities of the tumors and organs-at-risk (OARs) involved in these prostate cancer cases. The radiobiological models used are the Poisson and the relative seriality models. Furthermore, the complication-free tumor control probability, P+ and the biologically effective uniform dose ([Formula: see text]) were used for treatment plan evaluation and comparison. RESULTS: Our results demonstrate that HIPO with a modulation restriction value of 0.1-0.2 delivers high quality plans which are practically equivalent to those achieved with free modulation regarding the clinically used dosimetric indices. In the comparison, many of the dosimetric and radiobiological indices showed significantly different results. The modulation restricted clinical plans demonstrated a lower total dwell time by a mean of 1.4% that was proved to be statistically significant (p = 0.002). The HIPO with MR treatment plans produced a higher P+ by 0.5%, which stemmed from a better sparing of the OARs by 1.0%. CONCLUSIONS: Both the dosimetric and radiobiological comparison shows that the modulation restricted optimization gives on average similar results with the optimization without modulation restriction in the examined clinical cases. Concluding, based on our results, it appears that the applied dwell time regularization technique is expected to introduce a minor improvement in the effectiveness of the optimized HDR dose distributions.