Chris Jones, Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Oncology at University of Cambridge, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article he and his colleagues co-authored, adding:
“Pleased to see our work on variation in radiotherapy-based oesophageal cancer care in the UK published.
In this we highlight:
- Substantial levels of variation in all aspects of radiotherapy care, including perceived indications, use of induction chemotherapy, approaches to treatment planning and re-planning, treatment techniques, quality assurance and dosing.
- Poor access to brachytherapy: 2/3 of centres report that they cannot readily refer patients for it, and only 9% of centres can access brachytherapy ‘at every opportunity’.
- Very limited prehabilitation or post-treatment rehabilitation.
- Hugely variable follow-up approaches following definitive chemoradiotherapy, which often do not take into account whether a patient remains fit for salvage resection.
This emphasises a need for urgent standardisation of care. To help progress this and gather further evidence, we have worked with NHS England to develop quality improvement metrics that can be monitored using routinely available data from the National Radiotherapy Dataset.
Great work from C. Will Bleaney, Katharine Aitken, Tom Crosby, Ganesh Radhakrishna, Raj Roy and Katie Spencer.”
Title: Radiotherapy for Oesophageal Cancer in the United Kingdom: Patterns of Practice and Quality Indicators
Authors: C. Will Bleaney, Katharine Aitken, Tom Crosby, Ganesh Radhakrishna, Raj Roy and Katie Spencer, Chris Jones
Read the Full Article on Clinical Oncology
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