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. 2024 Sep 24;31(1):e100949.
doi: 10.1136/bmjhci-2023-100949.

Improving breast cancer multidisciplinary meetings through streamlining with protocol-based management

Aaditya Prakash Sinha #  1   2 , Katie Badawy #  3 , Belul Shifa  2   3 , Zhane Peterson  2   3 , Mohamed Attia  2 , Sarah Pinder  3   4 , Arnie Purushotham  5   3
Affiliations

Improving breast cancer multidisciplinary meetings through streamlining with protocol-based management

Aaditya Prakash Sinha et al. BMJ Health Care Inform. .

Abstract

Objectives: Multidisciplinary meetings (MDMs) are part of standard of care for patients with cancer. Streamlining is essential for high-quality care and efficiency. This study evaluated the feasibility of implementing a protocol to remove patients with benign breast disease from discussion at the MDM.

Methods: A prospective review of 218 MDMs evaluated patients with benign breast disease over 22 months. This was followed by a protocol implementation phase over 54 MDMs (6.5 months). Patients meeting specific criteria were excluded from discussion.

Results: On average, each MDM consisted of 37 patients, 34.2% of whose conditions were benign and potentially could have been removed from discussion. The implementation phase showed 708/2248 patients (32.5%) were benign of which 631 cases (89%) met the eligibility criteria and were removed from the MDM list allowing more time for discussion of complex cases.

Conclusion: Implementing a protocol can safely exclude patients with benign disease from MDM discussion.

Keywords: Disease Management; Secondary Care.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

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