Quality assurance in radiation oncology.

Quality assurance in radiation oncology attempts to prescribe consistent, safe, and optimal delivery of radiation to treat disease. It encompasses three major areas of treatment: clinical, physical, and technical. Although national approaches and guidelines of quality assurance in radiation oncology are available, they usually are not adequate to deal with the particular needs of individual institutions, nor are they adequate to ensure uniform standards of diagnosis and treatment among institutions. Therefore, it is important for individual institutions to develop and implement strict quality assurance standards, based on national guidelines as well as their own strengths and needs, to ensure that patients receive the highest quality of radiotherapy and that the successes and failures of treatment are statistically reliable. This paper addresses the importance of quality assurance in radiation oncology and examines the quality assurance program in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology-Radiation Oncology at the University of Minnesota as an example of a program tailored to the needs of an individual institution.