ECCO Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care: Colorectal Cancer. A critical review

Abstract

ECCO essential requirements for quality cancer care (ERQCC) are checklists and explanations of organisation and actions that are necessary to give high-quality care to patients who have a specific tumour type. They are written by European experts representing all disciplines involved in cancer care. ERQCC papers give oncology teams, patients, policymakers and managers an overview of the elements needed in any healthcare system to provide high quality of care throughout the patient journey. References are made to clinical guidelines and other resources where appropriate, and the focus is on care in Europe. Colorectal cancer: essential requirements for quality care CONCLUSION: Taken together, the information presented in this paper provides a comprehensive description of the essential requirements for establishing a high-quality CRC service. The ECCO expert group is aware that it is not possible to propose a 'one size fits all' system for all countries, but urges that access to multidisciplinary units or centres must be guaranteed for all those with CRC.

Achieving high quality standards in laparoscopic colon resection for cancer: A Delphi consensus-based position paper

“…We retrieved 13 guidelines focused on colorectal cancer treatment representing all the continents [54e66], documenting also from this analysis a prevalence of American reports (30.7%), consistently with the language selection criteria adopted for this search. Although two guidelines were uninformative regarding MIS and recommendation for clinical practice [55,56], the vast majority of scientific societies recommend the use of laparoscopic resection for colon cancer based on the surgeon's documented experience as well as on patient-and tumor-specific factors. Indeed, the main concern of scientific group were: surgeon's training, transverse tumor and resection of metastatic disease/ bulky tumor if a curative resection can be achieved using open approach.…”

“…Most importantly, the vast majority of surgeons came from high volume institutions, had a significant rate of laparoscopic procedure/year and a minimal conversion rate. Most importantly, the greater percentages of their affiliation met the most recent ECCO recommendations regarding the minimum number of surgeons to be involved in colorectal cancer care (>2 surgeons) [56].…”

Identifying critical steps towards improved access to innovation in cancer care: a European CanCer Organisation position paper

“…For example, many hospitals that have so-called specialist cancer services are not organised into multidisciplinary units, as recommended by ECCO and other professional societies [35e37]. To this end, ECCO is currently developing essential standards to ensure a more consistent level of quality within designated specialised centres, looking specifically at colorectal cancer and bone and soft-tissue sarcomas [38,39].…”

The function of fatigue and illness perceptions as mediators between self‐efficacy and health‐related quality of life during the first year after surgery in persons treated for colorectal cancer

“…Colorectal cancer (CRC) is estimated to be the third most common cancer disease in males and the second most common in females worldwide (Ferlay et al., ). CRC is primarily treated with surgery; radiation and chemotherapy are possible additional treatments (Beets et al., ). The hospital time after surgery for uncomplicated CRC is about 1 week (Varadhan et al., ).…”