Telemedicine for multidisciplinary lung cancer meetings

Abstract

According to recent UK guidelines on the management of lung cancer, all cases should be reviewed prospectively by a lung cancer multidisciplinary team (MDT) and a thoracic surgeon should be readily available to liaise with the MDT. However, there is a shortage of thoracic surgeons in the UK. Over a one-year period, 28 MDT meetings were held at a district general hospital in Southend, at which 62 patients were presented to a tertiary cardiothoracic centre in London, 80 km away, via ISDN videoconferencing at 384 kbit/s. The annual resection rate increased by 30% following the introduction of the telemedicine MDTmeetings, and the mean time from first being seen in the clinic to surgery was reduced from 69 to 54 days.We estimate that the telemedicine meetings saved over three working weeks of thoracic surgical time during the year.

Systematic review of multidisciplinary teams in the management of lung cancer

“…There were 16 studies [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] that met the criteria for inclusion and these were published between 1994 and July 2007. MD team working is a relatively new concept in the management of lung cancer patients, so it was not surprising that there were no published studies before 1994.…”

“…Seven of the studies were before-and-after designs [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Four included only NSCLC patients [9,12,14,15] and one of these [9] only included patients older than 70 years and another only inoperable NSCLC cases [14].…”

“…Four included only NSCLC patients [9,12,14,15] and one of these [9] only included patients older than 70 years and another only inoperable NSCLC cases [14]. Three [10,11,13] included both SCLC and NSCLC patients.…”

Treatment of limited disease small cell lung cancer: the multidisciplinary team

“…Several trials reported outcomes before and after the implementation of MDTs; only three of these included a small number of patients with SCLC [10][11][12]. A systematic review by COORY et al [3] identified only one randomised trial [13] including SCLC investigating the impact of MDTs.…”

“…Spatial issues should not be a limiting factor nowadays; depending on the setting, a telecommunication solution might be implemented when physical meetings are difficult [12].…”