Commissioning and quality assurance of RapidArc radiotherapy delivery system: in regard to Ling et al. (Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2008;72;575-581): Absence of data does not constitute proof; the proof is in tasting the pudding.

摘要

To the Editor: The article by Ling et al. (1) is a description of a range of quality assurance procedures designed to validate the performance parameters of a Varian linear accelerator during RapidArc delivery. The authors also made comparative, unsubstantiated claims of large and specific efficiency gains afforded by the RapidArc technique over TomoTherapy without actually performing, or referring to, a single experiment on the latter device. The reviewers then permitted these claims to be incorporated into the article. Furthermore, to back up their conclusions, the authors used a reference that does not in fact support their claims. The peer-review process thus failed to cross-check the validity of the references. A further assertion concerning dose confor-mality is made purely on the basis of collimation geometry, without citing any evidence or published literature that the reasoning holds. This leaves the reader with comparative conclusions that are unsupported by either factual experimental data or well-supported and accurate references.