PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate the current role of medical oncologists in cancer care with a focus on increasing the recognition of medical oncology as an independent specialty. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Questionnaires modified from the Medical Oncology Status in Europe Survey dealing with oncology structure, resources, research, and patterns of care given by medical oncologists were selected. Several modifications were made to the questionnaire after feedback from the insurance and policy committee of the Korean Association for Clinical Oncology (KACO). The online survey was then sent to KACO members. RESULTS: A total of 214 medical oncologists (45.8% of the total inquiries), including 71 directors of medical oncology institutions, took the survey. Most institutions had various resources, including a medical oncology department (94.1%) and a department of radiation oncology (82.4%). There was an average of four medical oncologists at each institution. Medical oncologists were involved in various treatments from diagnosis to end-of-life care. They were also chemotherapy providers from a wide range of institutions that treated many types of solid cancers. In addition, 86.2% of the institutions conducted research. CONCLUSION: This is the first national survey in Korea to show that medical oncologists are involved in a wide range of cancer treatments and care. This survey emphasizes the contributions and proper roles of medical oncologists in the evolving health care environment in Korea.
Delivery of Health Care ; Diagnosis ; Drug Therapy ; Europe ; Insurance ; Korea* ; Medical Oncology* ; Radiation Oncology ; Surveys and Questionnaires

Recently there has been attempts to develop hospital information system including order communicating system, patient tracing system, tumor registry system, office automation system and picture archiving and communication system(PACS). The authors devloped a practical system that was operated via order communication system of Yeungnam University Hospital. The system provided us the 'speed, accuracy, reliability, retention, economy and wide applicability through practical test. So we believed that this system would be one of standard computerized programs in radiation oncology practice and providing widely usable data for clinical statistics, medical record, tumor registry system and clinical researches.
Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Medical Records ; Office Automation ; Radiation Oncology*

No abstract available.
Medical Oncology*

In spite of remarkable improvement of surgical skills and anesthesia, local failure still occurred in 36-45% of locally advanced colorectal cancer after curative resection with or without pre-or post-operative irradiation. Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) is the ideal modality which respectable lesions are removed surgically and the remaining cancer nests are sterilized by irradiation during a surgical procedure. Therefore, the excellent local control without the damage of the adjacent normal tissues can be achieved. In IORT, judicious set up of the treatment cone on the treatment surface of the patient is required for accurate and homogenous dose distribution within treatment field, especially on the slopping surface of sacrum and pelvic sidewall which are the common sites of the local recurrence in rectal cancer. For this purpose, adequate coordination of gantry rotation and table tilting are essential. Adjusting gantry rotation is not difficult but tilting of the table is impossible inconventional treatment couch. Department of Therapeutic Radiology in Yeungnam University Medical Center developed the IORT table for colorectal cancer which is easy to set up and detach on head-down is about 30 degree which is efficient and easy-to-use, not only for IORT but also for colorectal surgery. So far, authors performed IORT with newly developed treatment table in 2 patients with rectal cancer and we found that this newly developed table could contribute in improving the dose distribution of IORT and surgical procedure for colorectal cancer.
Academic Medical Centers ; Anesthesia, Local ; Colorectal Neoplasms* ; Colorectal Surgery ; Humans ; Radiation Oncology ; Rectal Neoplasms ; Recurrence ; Sacrum

PURPOSE: A tumor registry system for the patients treated by radiotherapy at Samsung Medical Center since the opening of a hospital at 1994 was employed. In this study, the tumor registry system was introduced and the validity of the tumor registration was analyzed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The tumor registry system was composed of three parts: patient demographic, diagnostic, and treatment information. All data were input in a screen using a mouse only. Among the 10,000 registered cases in the tumor registry system until Aug, 2002, 199 were randomly selected and their registration data were compared with the patients' medical records. RESULTS: Total input errors were detected in 15 cases (7.5%). There were 8 error items in the part relating to diagnostic information: tumor site 3, pathology 2, AJCC staging 2 and performance status 1. In the part relating to treatment information there were 9 mistaken items: combination treatment 4, the date of initial treatment 3 and radiation completeness 2. According to the assignment doctor, the error ratio was consequently variable. The doctors who did no double-checks showed higher errors than those that did (15.6% : 3.7%). CONCLUSIONS: Our tumor registry had errors within 2% for each item. Although the overall data quality was high, further improvement might be achieved through promoting sincerity, continuing training, periodic validity tests and keeping double-checks. Also, some items associated with the hospital information system will be input automatically in the next step.
Animals ; Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Medical Records ; Mice ; Pathology ; Quality Control ; Radiation Oncology* ; Radiotherapy ; Data Accuracy

As the patients population ages, cancer screening increases, and cancer treatments improve, millions more head and neck carcinoma (HNC) patients will be classified as cancer survivors in the future. Change in epidemiology with human papillomavirus related HNC leads to a number of young treated patients. After treatment for HNC intensive surveillance, including ear, nose and throat (ENT) endoscopy, imaging, and serology, confers a survival benefit that became less evident in unresectable recurrence. We performed a comprehensive revision of literature and analyzed the experience of our centre. We revised publications on this topic and added data derived from the interdisciplinary work of experts within medical oncology, ENT, and radiation oncology scientific societies. We retrospectively collected local and distant recurrence of chemoradiation treated patients at Santa Croce and Carle University Hospital. A HNC follow-up program is not already codified and worldwide accepted. There is a need of scheduled follow-up. We suggest adopting a standardized follow-up guideline, although a multidisciplinary approach is frequently requested to tailor surveillance program and treatment on each patient.
Ear ; Early Detection of Cancer ; Endoscopy ; Epidemiology ; Follow-Up Studies* ; Head and Neck Neoplasms* ; Head* ; Humans ; Medical Oncology ; Neck ; Nose ; Pharynx ; Radiation Oncology ; Recurrence ; Retrospective Studies ; Societies, Scientific ; Survivors

PURPOSE: To get the data for public information and education of medical students about radiation therapy (RT). MATERIALS AND METHODS: We evaluated the knowledge and attitudes towards the RT and cancer in the third grade medical students who did not receive a lecture before starting the poly-clinic education about radiation oncology in our medical school. We obtained a total of 142 answers from the students that completed the questionnaire. RESULTS: More than half of the third grade medical students answered 1 question correctly and 5 questions incorrectly among 6 questions about knowledge of RT. Incorrect answers were done about the frequency of RT, hair loss, the period of RT, re-RT, cost of RT. Fifty-six percent of students didn't wish to prolong the survival time from 1 year to 3 years with long courses of chemotherapy and RT. They had bad images about cancer of colorectum, lung, esophagus, liver, breast, cervix which consist of 56.3% of patients receiving RT. CONCLUSION: Public information about the basic points of RT should be considered. Also the students showed the pessimism about the anticancer treatments such as chemotherapy and RT, so the exact results and positive aspects of anticancer treatment should be educated more. Especially it is needed to inform the students and the public the positive aspects of RT in some cancers (colorectal, lung, esophageal, hepatic, breast, cervix cancers) which the students had bad images about.
Breast ; Cervix Uteri ; Drug Therapy ; Education ; Esophagus ; Female ; Hair ; Humans ; Liver ; Lung ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Radiation Oncology ; Schools, Medical ; Students, Medical

Local control is the important prognostic factor in cancer treatment because local control decrease the relative risk of metastatic spread and increse distant metastasis free survival. IORT is the modality which could increase local control without incressing complication, combined with curative operation. Eventhough we could achieve significant deacreased local failure by IORT and curative resection, it should not be committed as a main treatment modality without proving acceptable complications. Therapeutic Radiology Department of Yeungnam University Medical Center have tried 58 IORT from June 15, 1988, and performed 53 IORT in patients with gastric cancer. No local failure has been reporte? by regular follow up so far. Nine cases(17%) of treatment related complifaiton were reported including intestinal obstrution, hemorrhage, sepsis, and bone marrow depression. These complications could be comparable to Jo's 25.2% (chemotherapy + operation), Kim's 18% (chemotherapy only in inoperable patients), because our treatment regimen is consisted of IORT (1500 cGy), external irradiation(--4500 cGy) and extensive chemotherapy (FAM, 5FU+MMC, BACOP). Our data encouraged us to re-inforce further IORT in stomach cancer treatment.
Academic Medical Centers ; Bone Marrow ; Depression ; Drug Therapy ; Follow-Up Studies ; Hemorrhage ; Humans ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Radiation Oncology ; Sepsis ; Stomach Neoplasms*

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to investigate fatigue and its related factors in cancer patients receiving radiotherapy. METHOD: The subjects of this study consisted of 98 patients receiving radiotherapy. Subjects were recruited from C University Hospital radiation oncology unit located in Gwangju from March to May, 2001. Questionnaire and medical records were used for data collection. The obtained data was analyzed using SAS program that included descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Post-hoc test(Fisher's LSD) and Pearson's correlation coefficients. RESULT: The fatigue perceived by the subjects was middle level (5.59 +/- 1.59) and 72.4% of them reported greater than 5 points. The subjects in no religion, low income, and spouse caregiver groups experienced the higher fatigue than another groups, respectively. The subjects in nasopharyngeal cancer, head & neck radiation site, and analgesics medication groups did, experience fatigue as well. The fatigue not only positively correlated with symptom distress, disruption of usual activity, sleep dissatisfaction, and mood state, but also negatively with less family support. CONCLUSION: Cancer patients receiving radiotherapy experience the middle level of fatigue and it correlates with the multi-dimensional factors. However, further research is needed to identify the changes in fatigue over the radiotherapy period through longitudinal design and to develop nursing intervention for fatigue decrease.
Analgesics ; Analysis of Variance ; Caregivers ; Data Collection ; Fatigue* ; Gwangju ; Head ; Humans ; Medical Records ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; Neck ; Nursing ; Radiation Oncology ; Radiotherapy*

No abstract available.
Joints ; Medical Oncology ; Publications