News
A Relational Database to Audit and Assess Patient Set-up Data from 3-Dimensional Verification
Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Julie Davies, Superintendent Research Radiographer, Julia Stratford, Senior Research Radiographer, Steven Smith, Research Radiographer, Ranald Mackay, Head of Radiotherapy Physics (Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust).
Recent technological advances, enabling image-guided
radiotherapy, help to ensure that patients with cancer
receive optimum treatment. The Trust has
concentrated on establishing techniques that utilise
the image-guiding equipment to its full potential.
This gives the option to reduce treatment margins
and toxicities, and even offer radical treatments that
have previously been impossible due to positioning
concerns and proximity of tumours to critical
structures. However, these advances have created a
new need – to monitor huge volumes of population
data and ensure clinical changes are
evidence based.
Most centres in the UK do not have the facility to be able to interrogate their patient data accurately and meet recommendations of the Royal College of Radiologists, Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, and The Society and The College of Radiographers. The relational database, developed by the Trust, is currently the only system that can meet these guidelines, evaluating huge amounts of population data, formatting reports and treatment margin recipes, and ensuring that all clinical changes are evidence based. The performance of the database has been thoroughly checked.
The database provides instant information to staff, allowing them to view measurements and problems during setup in a patient data sheet, which aids and improves an individual’s positioning. The database is being used to constantly review the way patients are positioned and receiving treatment, and it also facilitates the assessment of new technologies and techniques.
Image: Julia Stratford, Senior Research Radiographer, Ranald Mackay, Head of Radiotherapy Physics and Julie Davies, Superintendent Research Radiographer (Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust).