4H04-Physics QA for Clinical Trials ‑ Experience from 35 Years of Monitoring

Geoffrey S. Ibbott, PhD

Radiation Physics Dept.

UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Box 547

1515 Holcombe Blvd

Houston, TX  77030

The treatment received by all patients that are treated on clinical trials must be clinically comparable in order for the study to arrive at scientifically meaningful results. The radiotherapy community recognized this need to standardize the technical aspects of radiation treatment in 1968. At the urging of the Committee on Radiation Therapy Studies (CRTS) and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), the NCI funded the Radiological Physics Center in 1969, and has funded it continuously since then. Today 1,338 megavoltage therapy facilities are monitored by the RPC for participation in one or more of the hundreds of protocols sponsored by roughly a dozen cooperative groups presently active and their intergroup activities. Most of these institutions are in North America, but a number of them are located in other countries.

The RPC's responsibility is to assure that institutions participating in cooperative clinical trials have acceptable quality assurance programs and no major technical discrepancies. This assurance is necessary so that the cooperative groups can focus their efforts on evaluation of the clinical aspects, and on any dosimetry aspects that are of particular importance to specific protocols. In 35 years, the RPC has accumulated a wealth of experience and data regarding the quality of radiation treatments in the US and throughout the world.