# Estimating the demand for radiotherapy from the evidence: a review of changes from 2003 to 2012

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-barton-radiother-oncol/  
OnCo record `paper-barton-radiother-oncol` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one bottleneck page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 24833561 and published in Radiotherapy and Oncology; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Background and purpose: In 2003 we estimated that 52.3% of new cases of cancer in Australia had an indication for external beam radiotherapy at least once at some time during the course of their illness. This update reviews the contemporary evidence to define the optimal proportion of new cancers that would benefit from radiotherapy as part of their treatment and estimates the changes to the optimal radiotherapy utilisation rate from 2003 to 2012.

Materials and methods: National and international guidelines were reviewed for external beam radiotherapy indications in the management of cancers. Epidemiological data on the proportion of new cases of cancer with each indication for radiotherapy were identified. Indications and epidemiological data were merged to develop an optimal radiotherapy utilisation tree. Univariate and Monte Carlo simulations were used in sensitivity analysis.

Results: The overall optimal radiotherapy utilisation rate (external beam radiotherapy) for all registered cancers in Australia changed from 52.3% in 2003 to 48.3% in 2012. Overall 8.9% of all cancer patients in Australia have at least one indication for concurrent chemo-radiotherapy during the course of their illness.

Conclusions: The reduction in the radiotherapy utilisation rate was due to changes in epidemiological data, changes to radiotherapy indications and refinements of the model structure.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 24833561 (DOI 10.1016/j.radonc.2014.03.024). Matched by DOI alone: one bottleneck page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Radiotherapy and Oncology
- Year: 2014
- DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2014.03.024
- Authors: Barton MB, Jacob S, Shafiq J, et al.
- What it means: One bottleneck page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- Radiother Oncol 2014: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radonc.2014.03.024
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24833561/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/24833561

## Connected records

- bottlenecks: [Surgery and radiotherapy cure most, get least](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-surgery-radiation-innovation/)
- journals: [Radiotherapy and Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/radiotherapy-and-oncology/)

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