In January 2011 a PET/CT scanner was installed in the Peter Mac radiotherapy planning (RTP) area and potential radiotherapy patients undergoing diagnostic FDG-PET/CT studies were performed on this scanner with protocols incorporating RTP requirements.
Objective:
Evaluate whether this additional scanner has improved patient care and is an effective use of resources.
Results:
Episodic PET/FDG data was extracted for the period June to November in both 2010 and 2011. The total number of scans remained unchanged between the two periods. For urgent or staging scans, average waiting-times decreased from 10.3 to 7.5 days. For lung patients waiting-times reduced from 8.7 to 5.6 days, and head/neck 8.5 to 6.9 days.
Lung and head & neck (H&N) tumour streams were investigated in more detail. In the context of RTP PET/FDG patients undergoing diagnosis can have generic or fully prescribed positioning. For lung cancer patients the number of patients undergoing (a) diagnostic only, (b) generic or (c) prescribed studies were in 2010 - 310, 0 and 35 respectively, while in 2011 these were 117, 171 and 76 respectively.Similar results were seen for H&N patients.
Data was examined for variation in urgent waiting-times across the WCMICS sites during the two periods. For lung staging the range across sites was in 2010 6.9-12.2 days, and in 2011 was 5.0-5.4 days. In H&N patients these waiting-times were 4.8-9.2 days and 3.9-7.4 days respectively.
PET and radiotherapy data were combined to assess the impact of dedicated PET services time to complete planning and start treatment. Reduction in PET waiting-times approximated the reduction in time-to-treatment in lung (44.7 vs 41.0 days) and H&N (43.5 vs 42.3 days) patients.
Conclusion
Additional PET facilities dedicated to provide combined diagnostic and RTP services improved patient access. Expedited staging and RTP leads to reduced time to start treatment which should improve outcomes.