Patterns of Care for Brachytherapy in Europe, in Spain and Italy: Comparative Results

Abstract

Although the estimated workload of the radiation oncologists, physicists and radiation technologists was higher in Spain, no statistically significant differences were found in the average number of patients per center for the following tumor sites: bronchus, head and neck, intracoronary, esophagus, prostate, rectum and skin. Several differences in the use of the brachytherapy procedures applied were also found.

Patterns of care of radiotherapy in México

“…Studies on a pattern of care allow to draw reliable picture of current status of radiotherapy delivery in a country or region. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] The results support the comparison with other countries and arise awareness in the society and authorities. Such effort leads to improvement and optimization of organization of delivery of radiotherapy and may improve the treatment outcome.…”

Resident training in brachytherapy in France: A 10-year update after the first survey of SFJRO members

“…In fact, the analysis of the logbooks of American residents between 2007 and 2018 showed a steady decrease in the number of interstitial implants performed by residents from 34.5 to 20.6 ( p < 0.001), due to decreasing prostate volume, from 21.5 to 12 ( p < 0.001) [ 16 , 28 ]. France has fewer brachytherapy centers per capita than other countries: one center per 1,200,000 inhabitants in France vs. one per 850,000 in Spain, for example [ 29 ]. In an analysis of radiotherapy units in Europe, it was found that France had one of the lowest rates of centers performing brachytherapy: 40% vs. 60% or more in Northern European countries, for example [ 30 ].…”

Brachytherapy boost for prostate cancer: A national survey from Groupe curiethérapie – Société française de radiothérapie oncologique

“…In 2014, it was published that 82% of the young French radiation oncologists considered not to have sufficient brachytherapy training and since then, the number of effective centres has not changed, therefore limiting its development [22,23]. Therefore, these areas need reinforcement in terms of centres and human resources, with may be around one brachytherapy centre for 850 000 people as observed in Spain (vs. 1/1 200 000 in France) or QUARTS benchmark of 450 patients per linear accelerator per year to be a sensible objective [24,25]. However, this figure is still far from the our actual health supply, as reported in a European study where the mean number of patients treated by brachytherapy were 138 and this is why both the number of effective centres and trained teams need to be increased [21].…”