Radiation therapy interruption in a poor resource setting: causes and management.

Abstract

Background: Treatment interruption is the failure to execute approved treatment plan of a patient. This adversely affects treatment outcome if not properly managed. This retrospective study cause s and management of radiation treatment interruptions during High Dose Rate Brachytherapy(HDRB) for carcinoma of the cervix in a teaching hospital in Nigeria. Methods'. Five hundred patients with cervical carcinoma, who received HDRB, post external beam radiotherapy, between August, 2008 and July, 2013 were assessed. They were grouped into(A): those who experienced treatment interruption and(B): those who did not. Each patient was scheduled to receive three fractions of HDRB over 3 weeks. Those in groups A were assessed for the exact treatment fraction missed, the cause and duration of treatment interruption and the actions taken to compensate for non-execution of treatment. Results: A total of 90 patients fall into group A and most (41) of them experienced interruptions in the third fraction of their treatment. T h e most frequent (44%) causes of treatment interruptions observed among them were patient-related. Record of compensation for treatment interruption was not found in patients'treatment folders. This action may be due to lack of functional procedures for managing treatment interruptions and insufficient follow-up of patients, who never came back for consideration for compensation. Conclusion: This study showed that radiation oncology centres need to review their policies for managing treatment interruption s and documentation. Also, the mechanism for patients' follow-up should be strengthened to a reasonable extent to achieve better radiotherapy care.