TomoTherapy: implications on daily workload and scheduling patients.

Abstract

The aim of the study was to measure the mean duration of treatments and to investigate the occasional events, with extreme influence on treatment time. Time measurements were performed from the start of patient treatments (n=72) and one year later (n=27) on TomoTherapy. The time interval of the different procedures during treatment was measured. The cause of extra long treatment time was examined. All patients received a MV-CT scan prior to treatment. The mean overall total treatment time per localization ranged from 21.3 to 27.4 min. In 4.1% of the total population extreme long time measurements have been observed, interruptions due to equipment malfunction being the main cause (57.5%). Comparison between time measurements performed after clinical implementation and time measurements performed one year later to examine the learning curve, showed no differences. Treating a patient on TomoTherapy takes approximately 25 min, yielding 19 patients to be treated within 8 h. However, occasional treatment interruptions and variations in time of irradiation have a certain impact on daily patient scheduling for treatment, and influences the workload from day-to-day.