engleski

QC audit in radiotherapy centres in Croatia

Existance and implementation of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) programme is fundamental for the outcome of the radiation therapy. The main goal of radiotherapy in general is to irradiate target volumes with high doses while sparing surrounding healthy tissue as much as possible. Functionality of QA programme depends strongly on existance of QC protocols. Their implementation in daily routine in turn increases the probability of successfull treatment delivery. Physical aspects of QA/QC programme in radiation therapy have been an important area of interest for groups of physicists at UH Rijeka and UH Osijek during last 15 years. Since 2005 both groups work together on QA/QC issues under the IAEA projects. In order to review QC practices in Croatian radiation therapy centers, characteristic tests, extracted from developed protocols [1], were performed in six radiotherapy centers. In this way different parameters of linear accelerators and conventional simulators were being tested. We used regular tools for routine QC. This survey showed rather low awareness of QA/QC importance in Croatian radiotherapy departments. The most critical parameters were crosshair intersection stability with collimator rotation, rotation of treatment table and gantry, multi-leaf collimator width of stripes and central axis dose for asymmetric fields [2]. The results of this survey were expected since QC of radiotherapy equipment is still neglected by some hospital managements. Having tools for QC is more exception than a rule, and written QC protocols do not exist in more than a half of Croatian radiotherapy departments. If at least similar QC protocols were used all over Croatia it would be possible to compare results between radiotherapy centres. This is necessary for clinical trials and also for sharing experience between centres [3]. Bibliography 1. Croatian Medical and Biological Engineering Society / Medical Physics Division. Priručnik za kontrolu kvalitete linearnog akceleratora [Linear accelerator quality control handbook, in Croatian] [displayed 25 July 2011]. Available at http://medfizika.netai.net/upload/Protokol_Onco rOsijek Rijeka.doc 2. Jurković S, Diklić A, Kasabašić M, et al. Survey of Equipment Quality Control in Radiotherapy Centres in Croatia: First results. Arch Ind Hyg Toxicol 2011 ; 62 3: 255-260. 3. Podgorsak EB. Radiation Oncology Physics: A Handbook for Teachers and Students. Vienna: IAEA ; 2005.

radiotherapy ; quality assurance ; quality control

nije evidentirano