The requirements of a specialist Prostate Cancer Unit: A discussion paper from the European School of Oncology

Quality assessment in prostate cancer centers certified by the German Cancer Society

“…Fulfillment is high with over 80 % of the sites fulfilling the recommendations for all but three of the presented QIs with defined target values. Over time, fulfillment of seven requirements increased significantly, specifically with regard to conducting multidisciplinary tumor conferences (increasing proportion of cases presented pre-and post-treatment, increasing participation of specialists), psycho-oncologic care, social service counseling and research participation (QIs 2, 3,5,7,9,10,11). Fulfillment of the QI for which data were only available for 2 years decreased (12) with p < 0.001.…”

“…The many different treatment options as well as specific sideeffects and benefits call for treatment and counseling by multidisciplinary and interprofessional teams [4][5][6]. To our knowledge, the first multidisciplinary clinic for the treatment of PCa has been founded as early as 1996 in the USA [5,7,8], and since then, quite a number of countries have introduced national efforts and established multidisciplinary PCa units [9]. In Germany, the introduction of prostate cancer centers (PCCs) was driven by efforts of the medical societies, patient advocacy groups, as well as the federal government.…”

Prostate Cancer Unit Initiative in Europe: A position paper by the European School of Oncology

“…The work of the Task Force allowed the re-evaluation of the previously described PCU requirements [10] and changes were introduced to make them adoptable at a European level. Since the movement toward the establishment of PCU was aimed to reach most European countries, the bar had to be set at a reasonably attainable medium level, at least in the first phase, and the feasibility of the criteria had to be thoroughly checked.…”

“…ESO initiated a discussion in the European uro-oncologic community and advocacy groups on the need and requirements for establishing PCU. The first step was the publication of the article "The Requirements of a Specialist Prostate Cancer Unit: A Discussion Paper from the European School of Oncology" in 2011 [10], which sought to open the debate in peer-reviewed journals [28][29][30] and within national and international scientific societies (i.e. European Association of Urology-EAU, European Society for Medical Oncology-ESMO, European Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology-ESTRO, Italian Society for Uro-Oncology-SIUrO), with dedicated sessions on the pros and cons of the multiprofessional management of prostate cancer patients.…”

“…According to the patient's state of disease, surgery, external radiotherapy, brachytherapy, hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, radionuclide metabolic therapy as well as active surveillance, watchful waiting and supportive care can be considered [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. As a result, several health care professionals play a significant role in the care of prostate cancer patients, including, non exhaustively, urologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, pathologists, nuclear medicine physicians, imaging specialists, psychologists, nurses, sexual therapists, physiotherapists, geriatricians, and experts in palliative and supportive care potentially involved in specific disease settings [10].…”