Proposed standardization for radiotherapy institutions in Japan

The importance of Quality Assurance (QA) has well been recongnized in radiotherapy. However, no standard report on manpower and equipment has been available in Japan. This study is the consensus recommendation of the research group organized under the support of the grant from the Ministry of Health & Wealfare. In this recommendation, radiotherapy institutions were categolized in three groups. The large institution has 300 or more radiotherapy patients per year, medium one 150–300, and small one 150 or less, respectively. The institutions were also categorized according to the following criteria: (1) number of the board certified radiotherapists, (2) number of medical physicists, (3) number of radiotherapy technologists, (4) area of radiotherapy facility, (5) radiotherapy related equipment, (6) experience in intraoperative radiotherapy, stereotactic irradiation, total body irradiation, brachytherapy, conformal radiotherapy, and hyperthermia, (7) patient registration for the JASTRO data base, (8) annual dose calibration by the Radiotherapy Dosimetry Center.