| Abstract: |
Purpose: The purpose of this survey was to test the feasibility of using proposed quality indicators to assess radiotherapy quality in prostate cancer management based on a 2007 stratified random survey of treating academic and nonacademic US institutions. Methods and Materials: A total of 414 patients with clinically localized prostate cancer treated with external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) or brachytherapy were selected from 45 institutions. Indicators used as specific measurable clinical performance measures to represent surrogates for quality of radiotherapy delivery included established measures such as the use of prescription doses ≥75 Gy for intermediate- and high-risk EBRT patients and androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) in conjunction with EBRT for patients with high-risk disease, and emerging measures, including daily target localization (image-guidance) to correct for organ motion for EBRT patients. Results: Among the 354 patients treated with EBRT, the beam energy was recorded in 353 patients. One hundred sixty-seven patients (47%) were treated with 6 MV photons, 31 (9%) were treated with 10 MV, 65 (18%) received 15 MV, and the remaining 90 (26%) 16-23 MV. For intermediate- plus high-risk patients (n = 181), 78% were treated to ≥75 Gy. Among favorable-risk patients, 72% were treated to ≥75 Gy. Among high-risk EBRT patients, 60 (87%) were treated with ADT in conjunction with EBRT and 13% (n = 9) with radiotherapy alone. Among low- and intermediate-risk patients, 10% and 42%, respectively, were treated with ADT plus EBRT. For 24% of EBRT patients (85 of 354), weekly electronic portal imaging was obtained as verification films without daily target localization, and the remaining 76% were treated with daily localization of the target using various methods. Conclusions: Adherence to defined quality indicators was observed in a majority of patients. Approximately 90% of high-risk patients were treated with ADT plus EBRT and ≈80% of intermediate- and high-risk patients received prescription doses ≥75 Gy, consistent with the published results of randomized trials. © 2013 American Society for Radiation Oncology. |
