Quality assurance in conformal radiotherapy: DYNARAD consensus report on practice guidelines.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Conformal radiotherapy has only recently been widely implemented. Although not all aspects have yet been adequately proven, it is generally recognized that maintaining a high degree of precision throughout the process is critical to the treatment outcome while the focus for quality assurance and quality improvement will need to concentrate more on human factors, procedures, communication, organization and training. A general consensus document on quality assurance guidelines for institutions that deliver conformal radiotherapy treatments to patients has been elaborated within the framework of the DYNARAD/BIOMED concerted action on conformal radiotherapy. The present paper aims to highlight those issues that were identified as of specific importance to conformal radiotherapy. The work reported here further details this guidance by direct correlation with the issues involved in the special case of conformal radiotherapy. METHODS The DYNARAD document has been drafted in the form of a desktop guide comprising six sets of guidelines and is based on the ESTRO advisory report on 'Quality Assurance in Radiotherapy'. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The document has been endorsed by the DYNARAD group of institutions. As such it can form the basis for further discussions and enter into the subsequent phase of expanding its consensus basis.