Search

The first quality assurance, audit and control system in the Hungarian "'health" care industry" is described for the medical specialty of radiotherapy. The prerequisites of the elaboration of the programme were an exact knowledge of the current Hungarian infrastructural and staffing conditions, and the radiotherapeutic activities. The recommendations cover the 5 medical universities including the national institute (the Debrecen, Pécs, Semmelweis, Szent-Györgyk Albert Medical Universities, and Haynal Imre University of Health Sciences) and the 5 regional oncological centres in hospitals (Jósa András, Markusovszky, Petz Aladár, Szentpéteri kapu and Uzsoki Hospitals). The departmental functions (patient care, teaching-education, research work and scientific organizing activity) and the structure (organization, infrastructure, staffing conditions, etc.) are described first, followed by the therapeutic principles and clinical process (patient referral and selection, decision-making, priorities in therapy initiation, treatment preparation and execution, etc.). The informal daily/weekly quality assurance programme long applied in the routine patient care has been formalized and supplemented with a weekly audit conference. In the course of the medical audit, all relevant clinical data are reviewed and scored by an internal or an external expert (not participating directly in the treatment process), e.g. for the adequacy of the medical decision preparative process, conformation to the institutional treatment protocol, equipment selection, treatment planning, simulation and portal film, etc. If a major deviation is detected, an immediate correction is initiated; minor deviations need analysis and then preventive and correcting action. As concern the audit of the other activities of the departments, the important indicators and their minimally desirable level are defined. The final goal of the implementation of this programme is high-precision radiotherapy with the best achievable treatment result.

The authors reviewed the adjuvant chemotherapeutical treatment after operation of the breast cancer. At their department 6 cycles CMF doses were given to the node positive premenopausal patients. In order to analyse the results a control group was set up. They examined the effect of the treatment concerning the tumour-free survival and survival data. For the calculation the log-rank test--Mantel-Haenszel chi 2-probe was used. The effect of the treatment is favourable.

The authors deal with the problems of adjuvant therapy of breast cancer. They administrated Zitazonium in those postmenopausal women who had had positive axillary lymph nodes. In the course of analyzing the results, they calculated survival and tumor free survival with "life-table" method, while they used log-rank probe and Mantel-Haenzel X2 probe for showing significance between the diagrams. The results were favourable, but no significant variance could be shown in the group treated with Zitazonium. If lymph nodes were proved to be negative the difference between the graphs were minimal. They refer to the question of steroid receptor determination and emphasize to take into account the biological markers when projecting adjuvant therapy.