for radiation therapy
Photo by Rhoda Baer
A new template can help standardize plans for long-term care of cancer survivors who have undergone radiation therapy (RT), according to the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).
An ASTRO advisory committee created the template to coordinate post-treatment care for cancer survivors among primary care providers (PCPs) and oncology
specialists (radiation, medical, and surgical), as well as patients themselves.
Details on the template appear in Practical Radiation Oncology.
“Factors such as earlier detection of cancer, increasingly effective treatment options, and an aging population lead to a growing number of cancer survivors and, ultimately, a need to educate and empower these individuals for their ongoing care,” said ASTRO chair Bruce D. Minsky, MD.
“The ASTRO template is designed to foster better coordination of post-treatment care for cancer survivors, including greater clarity in the dialogue between radiation oncologists and PCPs for issues such as less common side effects that may appear well after treatment is complete.”
Many radiation oncologists may already provide their patients with post-treatment materials such as diagnosis and treatment summaries, contacts for ancillary services such as financial or nutritional counselling, and information on potential late treatment effects.
But the ASTRO template coordinates these components in a central, plain-language document.
It also enables practices to meet new accreditation requirements set by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC).
In response to a 2006 recommendation from the Institutes of Medicine that cancer patients be provided with a survivorship care plan (SCP) following treatment, CoC issued a mandate that cancer programs provide SCPs for all curative cancer patients by 2019 to maintain accreditation.
ASTRO’s template includes both elements required by the CoC in SCPs—namely, a summary of past treatment and directions for future care.
The treatment summary outlines the survivor’s diagnosis and stage information; treatment details such as the site, dosage, and schedule of RT; and contact information for providers who delivered the treatment.
The plan for follow-up care covers anticipated toxicities from RT, expected course of recovery from treatment-related toxicities, possible functional and/or social limitations, recommendations for preventative measures and behaviors, cancer information resources, and referrals to supportive care providers.
“This 2-page template facilitates consistency in SCPs across the discipline and also reduces the time and effort required by providers to complete each individual plan,” said Ronald Chen, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The field of radiation oncology has a long tradition of creating treatment summaries for each patient, even before the Institute of Medicine recommended survivorship care plans in 2006. This radiation-oncology-specific template will serve a dual purpose as both a traditional radiation oncology treatment summary and a plan for survivorship care that meets CoC requirements, thus reducing the burden on radiation oncologists from having to create 2 documents for each patient.”
