Improving breast cancer multidisciplinary meetings through streamlining with protocol-based management.

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Surgical Pathology
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDMs) are integral to cancer care, ensuring comprehensive patient management.
• Optimizing MDM efficiency is crucial for high-quality, timely patient outcomes.
• A significant proportion of cases discussed in MDMs may involve benign conditions, potentially diverting resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of implementing a protocol to exclude patients with benign breast disease from MDM discussions.
• To evaluate the impact of this exclusion protocol on MDM efficiency and resource allocation.

Main Methods:

• A prospective review of 218 MDMs was conducted over 22 months to analyze the prevalence of benign breast disease cases.
• A protocol was implemented to exclude patients meeting specific criteria for benign breast disease from subsequent MDM discussions.
• The protocol implementation phase involved evaluating 54 MDMs over 6.5 months.

Main Results:

• Benign conditions constituted approximately 34.2% of patients discussed in average MDMs.
• During the implementation phase, 708 out of 2248 patients (32.5%) had benign conditions.
• The protocol successfully excluded 631 eligible benign cases (89%), freeing up MDM time for complex oncological cases.

Conclusions:

• A protocol for excluding patients with benign breast disease from MDM discussions is feasible and safe.
• This strategy can significantly improve MDM efficiency by allowing more time for the review of complex cancer cases.