Medical and nonmedical information during multidisciplinary team meetings in cancer care

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Background: Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings provide treatment recommendations based on available information and collective decision-making in teams with complementary professions, disciplines and skills. We aimed to map ancillary medical and nonmedical patient information during case presentations and case discussions in MDT meetings in cancer care. Methods: Through a nonparticipant, observational approach, we mapped verbal information on medical, nonmedical and patient-related characteristics and classified these based on content. Data were collected from 336 case discussions in three MDTs for neuro-oncology, sarcoma and hepato-biliary cancer. Results: Information on physical status was presented in 48.2% of the case discussions, psychological status in 8.9% and comorbidity in 48.5% of the cases. Nonmedical factors, such as family relations, occupation, country of origin and abode were referred to in 3.6–7.7% of the cases, and patient preferences were reported in 4.2%. Conclusions: Provision of information on comorbidities in half of the cases and on patient characteristics and treatment preferences in <10% of case discussions suggest a need to define data elements and develop reporting standards to support robust MDT decision-making.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCurrent Oncology
Volume28
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)1008-1016
Number of pages9
ISSN1198-0052
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The study was financially supported by the Swedish Cancer Society and by the Regional Cancer Center South, Region Sk?ne.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

    Research areas

  • Cancer conference, Comorbidity, Decision-making, Occupation tumor board, Patient-centered

ID: 282478478