A Tool for Reporting and Evaluation of Incidents in External Beam Radiation Therapy

Abstract

The number of cases of cancer has significantly increased in the world and the use of ionizing radiation produced by large clinical linear accelerators plays an important role in the treatment of tumors. Although radiotherapy is considered a safe medical practice, it may bring some risks for the patient and in some extreme cases even her/his death. Over the last decades, the learning with incidents there has been a powerful way to prevent them to turn to happen. In this work a digital tool was developed for recording and evaluation of incidents in external beam radiation therapy. The tool was designed to function in an intranet environment, but it can also be used in the offline mode and is based on a set of sequential forms filled by the user (e.g. medical physicists, medical dosimetrists, radiation oncologists, radiotherapy technicians). The software was firstly applied in a radiation oncology department of a public Institution in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The software has proved to be an important and promising tool to improve the healthcare quality of patients undergoing radiation therapy