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Background and purpose: Radiotherapy (RT) is an essential treatment modality against cancer and becoming even more in demand due to the anticipated increase in cancer incidence. Due to the rapid development of RT technologies amid financial challenges, we aimed to assess the available RT facilities and the issues with achieving health equity based on current equipment compared to the previous reports from Iran. Materials and methods: A survey arranged by the Iran Cancer Institute's Radiation Oncology Research Center (RORC) was sent to all of the country's radiotherapy centers in 2022. Four components were retrieved: the reimbursement type, equipment, human resources, and patient load. To calculate the radiotherapy utilization rate (RUR), the Lancet Commission was used. The findings were compared with the previous national data. Results: Seventy-six active radiotherapy centers with 123 Linear accelerators (LINACs) were identified. The centers have been directed in three ways. 10 (20 LINACs), 36 (50 LINACs), and 30 centers (53 LINACs) were charity-, private-, and public-based, respectively. Four provinces had no centers. There was no active intraoperative radiotherapy machine despite its availability in 4 centers. One orthovoltage X-ray machine was active and 14 brachytherapy devices were treating patients. There were 344, 252, and 419 active radiation oncologists, medical physicists, and radiation therapy technologists, respectively. The ratio of LINAC and radiation oncologists to one million populations was 1.68 and 4.10, respectively. Since 2017, 35±5 radiation oncology residents have been trained each year. Conclusion: There has been a notable growth in RT facilities since the previous reports and Iran's situation is currently acceptable among LMICs. However, there is an urgent need to improve the distribution of the RT infrastructure and provide more facilities that can deliver advanced techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rectal cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in the world. In many countries, the current standard of care is long-course chemoradiation (CRT), followed by total mesorectal excision. Some efforts have been made by intensifying radiation or chemotherapy components of the neoadjuvant therapy to further decrease the local recurrence and augment surgery's feasibility and improve the oncological outcomes. This paper reviews recent intensified neoadjuvant interventions in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) in terms of efficacy and treatment-related toxicity. Many maneuvers have been made so far to improve the oncological outcomes of rectal cancer with intensified neoadjuvant longcourse CRT. Some of these approaches seem compelling and deserve further study, while some have just increased the treatment-related toxicities without evident benefits. Those endeavors with greater pathological complete response than the standard of care may make us await the long-term results on survival rates and chronic treatment-related toxicity. After introduction of neoadjuvant CRT for LARC there have been many efforts to improve its outcomes. Here, this study gathered most of these efforts that intensified the neoadjuvant therapy with some being promising and some being futile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]