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. 2022 Jul;23(7):e13629.
doi: 10.1002/acm2.13629. Epub 2022 May 4.

Using a daily monitoring system to reduce treatment position override rates in external beam radiation therapy

Naichang Yu  1 , Anthony Magnelli  1 , Danielle LaHurd  1 , Anthony Mastroianni  1 , Eric Murray  1 , Mike Close  1 , Brian Hugebeck  1 , John H Suh  1 , Ping Xia  1
Affiliations

Using a daily monitoring system to reduce treatment position override rates in external beam radiation therapy

Naichang Yu et al. J Appl Clin Med Phys. 2022 Jul.

Abstract

Purpose/objectives: To report our 7-year experience with a daily monitoring system to significantly reduce couch position overrides and errors in patient treatment positioning.

Materials and methods: Treatment couch position override data were extracted from a radiation oncology-specific electronic medical record system from 2012 to 2018. During this period, we took several actions to reduce couch position overrides, including reducing the number of tolerance tables from 18 to 6, tightening tolerance limits, enforcing time outs, documenting reasons for overrides, and timely reviewing of overrides made from previous treatment day. The tolerance tables included treatment categories for head and neck (HN) (with/without cone beam CT [CBCT]), body (with/without CBCT), stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), and clinical setup for electron beams. For the same time period, we also reported treatment positioning-related incidents that were recorded in our departmental incident report system. To verify our tolerance limits, we further examined couch shifts after daily kilovoltage CBCT (kV-CBCT) for the patients treated from 2018 to 2021.

Results: From 2012 to 2018, the override rate decreased from 11.2% to 1.6%/year, whereas the number of fractions treated in the department increased by 23%. The annual patient positioning error rate was also reduced from 0.019% in 2012, to 0.004% in 2017 and 0% in 2018. For patients treated under daily kV-CBCT guidance from 2018 to 2021, the applied couch shifts after imaging registration that exceeded the tolerance limits were low, <1% for HN, <1.2% for body, and <2.6% for SBRT.

Conclusions: The daily monitoring system, which enables a timely review of overrides, significantly reduced the number of treatment couch position overrides and ultimately resulted in a decrease in treatment positioning errors. For patients treated with daily kV-CBCT guidance, couch position shifts after CBCT image guidance demonstrated a low rate of exceeding the set tolerance.

Keywords: automation; external beam radiotherapy; patient safety; treatment couch overrides; treatment positioning errors.

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Conflict of interest statement

No conflict interest is related to this manuscript.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
A flowchart of patient setup steps for new patients, patients with and without IGRT. IGRT is typically referred to kV‐CBCT. IGRT, imaging guided radiotherapy; kV‐CBCT, kilo‐voltage cone‐beam CT
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Four quality control metrics that measure quality controls of treatment delivery
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The frequency of immobilization devices used from 2012 to 2018
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The ranges and frequencies of couch position tolerance limits (in cm) applied in the (a) lateral, (b) longitudinal, and (c) vertical directions from 2012 to 2018
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
The annual number of overrides and the number of positioning errors from 2012 to 2018
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
The recorded table shifts after kV‐CBCT verifications for the treatment site of (a) HN‐CBCT; (b) body‐CBCT; (c) SBRT‐body, where the corresponding couch position tolerance was applied. HN‐CBCT, head and neck cone‐beam CT; kV‐CBCT, kilovoltage cone‐beam CT; SBRT, stereotactic body radiotherapy
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