Quality assurance practice guidelines for transperineal LDR permanent seed brachytherapy of prostate cancer

The decision to retain this document for information only was taken at the Clinical Oncology Professional Support and Standards Board meeting on 2 February 2018.

Quality assurance practice guidelines for transperineal LDR permanent seed brachytherapy of prostate cancer have been developed by the UK and Ireland Brachytherapy Group in conjunction with The Royal College of Radiologists. The objective of the group was to produce guidelines that a centre can follow in order to conduct high-quality LDR prostate brachytherapy and to provide a template for quality assurance audits. 

The need for these quality standards was highlighted after the well-publicised errors in a centre in the United States, where a lack of training and quality assurance led to poor quality implants and high toxicity in a number of patients.

We hope the adherence to these standards would prevent such an occurrence happening in the UK and Ireland; however, currently there are no standards in place that are peer reviewed for this procedure. 

The scope of guidelines within this document is focused on LDR permanent seed brachytherapy only.