Individual patient dosimetric data evaluation in a radiotherapy multicenter study

A quality control programme has been developed in the radiotherapy department of the Institut Gustave-Roussy for an international clinical trial on the use of Etanidazole as a radiosensitizer in association with radiotherapy for head and neck tumors. Twenty-nine european centers belonging to Germany, United Kingdom, Austria, France and Italy contributed to this trial during 374 patients has been included from 1987 to 1988. This programme concerned the control of the external radiotherapy equipment available in the participating centers and the examination of the patient treatment data. The authors present, in this paper, the methods applied and the main results obtained during the analysis of the individual patient treatment data. This analysis shows that 83% of the evaluable treatments were done in compliance with the protocol recommendations and 17% contained a major deviation and among them only 3% were judged unacceptable. (authors). 12 refs., 9 tabs., 4 figs