More cancer patients could be cured if they were diagnosed in time.
Sixty per cent of Czech patients with colorectal cancer are regularly diagnosed so late that they only have a 12% chance of five-year survival. In contrast, 93% of breast cancer patients - who have been diagnosed at an early stage - have been cured completely. Data of the Czech Society for Oncology have confirmed that if people took more advantage of cancer screening and paid attention to cancer prevention, much more cancer cases could have been cured.
Prof. Jiri Vorlicek, President of the Czech Society for Oncology, said that the results of the Czech oncology can compare to the results of top European countries, as regards the treatment of patients with less advanced stages of cancer. The overall results have been distorted by the fact that many cancer cases are diagnosed too late.
The expert society has launched a pioneer project to assess the quality of cancer care in the Czech Republic. The project CZ-ONCO(Q) will also focus on the early detection of malignant tumours, and will assess the effectiveness of preventive programmes.
The project will compare data on health care provided to cancer patients, sorted by diagnoses and stage of disease. Treatment of more advanced stages is generally more expensive. For the first time ever, health insurance companies will get a trustworthy estimate on how much financial resources will have to be spent on cancer patients in future. In addition, the project will find out how successful is each out of 18 comprehensive cancer centres.
"This project allows the Czech Society for Oncology to take the initiative in the assessment of quality of cancer care. It is important for all cancer-related health care facilities to adopt it," said Prof Vorlicek.
Every year, cancer is diagnosed in more than 67,000 Czech patients, and 27,000 patients die of the condition. There are about 387,000 people living with cancer, of which about 10% do not receive any further treatment; most of them, however, need a permanent care. According to Prof Vorlicek, Czech patients are given the latest medication, and centres have enough financial resources in order to provide the best possible treatment to all patients. Despite all this, treatment results can be further improved.
This has been confirmed by a two-year research project focusing on the quality of cancer care provided to patients with head and neck cancer, which had been solved at the Comprehensive Cancer Centre of University Hospital Ostrava. The project's author, David Feltl, M.D., Ph.D., said that treatment and survival were assessed in nearly 500 patients who were admitted to the hospital in 2004-2008: some patients were hospitalized before a change in radiotherapy protocols, some of them were admitted after this change; treatment results related to this change were closely monitored. And the results are encouraging: the 38% mortality (before the change) has dropped to 13% only (after the change).
According to Assoc. Prof. Ladislav Dusek, Director of the Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, the collection of data on treatment results is an important quality indicator. The oncologists want to interconnect data from the National Cancer Registry (containing 1.4 million records) with data from the individual cancer centres.
"We can immediately tell how many people have been diagnosed with cancer, including the stage of the disease, and where those patients have been treated. As soon as we get data from the centres, we will be able to assess diagnostic and treatment procedures and standards, as well as short-term and long-term treatment results; this will allow us to compare treatment costs with achieved results," explained Mr Dusek.
Mr Dusek added that those data will make it possible to "provide the right treatment to the right patient" and will become a support for oncologists negotiating with health insurance companies on payment changes. The health insurance companies could take into consideration, for example, that treatment costs might vary from region to region, as the spectrum of patients might be very different.
2. 10. 2008 Czech News Agency (CTK)
