Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care: Soft Tissue Sarcoma in Adults and Bone Sarcoma

The information presented in this paper provides a comprehensive description of the essential requirements for establishing a high-quality service for soft tissue sarcomas in adults and bone sarcomas.

 

Facts and Requirements 

• Sarcomas – which can be classified into soft tissue and bone sarcomas – are rare, but all rare cancers make up more than 20% of cancers in Europe, and there are substantial inequalities in access to high-quality care. Sarcomas, of which there are many subtypes, comprise a particularly complex and demanding challenge for healthcare systems and providers. This paper presents essential requirements for quality cancer care of soft tissue sarcomas in adults and bone sarcomas.
  
  
• The information presented in the Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care: Soft Tissue Sarcoma in Adults and Bone Sarcoma paper provides a comprehensive description of the essential requirements for establishing a high-quality service for soft tissue sarcomas in adults and bone sarcomas. The ERQCC expert group is aware that it is not possible to propose a ‘one size fits all’ system for all countries, but urges that access to multidisciplinary teams is guaranteed to all patients with sarcoma.
  
  
• High-quality care must only be carried out in specialised sarcoma centres (including paediatric cancer centres) which have both a core multidisciplinary team and an extended team of allied professionals, and which are subject to quality and audit procedures. Access to such units is far from universal in all European countries.
  
  
• It is essential that, to meet European aspirations for high-quality comprehensive cancer control, healthcare organisations implement the requirements in this paper, paying particular attention to multidisciplinarity and patient-centred pathways from diagnosis and follow-up, to treatment, to improve survival and quality of life for patients.