Page 50 - ARNM-1-1

Advances in Radiotherapy &

Nuclear Medicine

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Effectiveness of the barcode certification

system in preventing incorrect use of patient
immobilization device in radiotherapy

1
Satoko Saotome *, Fumiyasu Matsubayashi , Minoru Yoshioka ,
1
1
Takeo Hashimoto , Yasushi Ito , Masahiko Oguchi , and Yasuo Yoshioka 1
1
1,2
1
1 Radiation Oncology Department, The Cancer Institute Hospital of the Japanese Foundation for
Cancer Research, Tokyo, Japan
2 Medical Informatics Department, The Cancer Institute Hospital of the Japanese Foundation for
Cancer Research, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract
The present study showed that using a barcode system could reduce the improper use
of immobilization devices in patient positioning, by reviewing the incident/accident
(IA) reports before and after the introduction of the barcode system. A barcode system
is an effective tool to eliminate human error, which is essential for patient safety. In
our institution, approximately 1700 patients were treated using external irradiation.
We introduced a barcode system for patient immobilization devices used in external
irradiation of radiation therapy. Radiation therapy cannot be performed until each
immobilization device is authenticated by a barcode. The IA reports from 2010 to
*Corresponding author: 2019, before and after the barcode system was introduced, were compared. During
Satoko Saotome this period of time, 271 IA reports were submitted from our department, of which 16
(satoko.ishikawa@jfcr.or.jp) reports concerned with patient setup. Analysis was performed using R, comparing
Citation: Saotome S, the IA report before and after the barcode system was introduced. The number of
Matsubayashi F, Yoshioka M, the IA reports concerning patient positioning and immobilization decreased from
et al., 2023, Effectiveness of
the barcode certification system 12 to 4 after the barcode system was introduced. We have also investigated the time
in preventing incorrect use of efficiency of barcode certification system. The average treatment time per patient
patient immobilization device in was 7 min both before and after the barcode certification was introduced, showing
radiotherapy. Adv Radiother Nucl
Med, 1(1): 1036. no significant change in time efficiency. In conclusion, an authentication system of
https://doi.org/10.36922/arnm.1036 patient’s individual therapeutic devices using barcode is a necessary tool to avoid
Received: June 2, 2023 the improper use of immobilization devices, misplacement of bolus, and improper
couch shape.
Accepted: August 1, 2023
Published Online: August 17, 2023
Keywords: Barcode certification system; Incident/accident report; Radiation therapy;
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). Patient safety
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, 1. Introduction
provided the original work is
properly cited. Recently, the external irradiation method in radiation therapy has become highly precise.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience To perform accurate and precise radiation therapy, it is necessary to immobilize patients
Publishing remains neutral with as comfortably as possible; in addition, the reproducibility of the daily setup is essential .
[1]
regard to jurisdictional claims in [2]
published maps and institutional Fiorino et al. reported that using appropriate immobilization devices in radiation
affiliations. therapy for prostate cancer, the setup error was reduced from 5.0 mm to 3.0 mm in the

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/arnm.1036