COMPUTER-BASED QUALITY-CONTROL IN HIGH-DOSE CHEMOTHERAPY AND BONE-MARROW TRANSPLANTATION

High-dose chemotherapy with autologous and allogeneic blood stem cell transplantation has become a standard therapy for hematological malign ancies and solid tumors, To ensure quality of treatment and adherence to internationally approved protocols, the use of computer systems has been introduced in some oncology centers, Most software packages cann ot be used automatically by other institutions because of different tr eatment strategies and medications, To overcome this problem, we desig ned a software system based on an Oracle database, which allows the us er to develop his own therapy blocks and assemble them to generate spe cific therapy plans, The system supports the daily work of the physici ans by suggesting medications based on changes in the vital parameters or the clinical chemistry, Parameters can be given upper and lower li mits ,whose surpassing leads to treatment suggestions by the system, A ll quantitative variables may be depicted in a graphical way, The syst em is connected to external laboratory devices, Export of data to inte rnational registries is possible. Until now, 43 patients have been tra nsplanted with the help of this system, There is a high degree of acce ptance among the nursing staff and the physicians, The system can be t ransferred to other centers, if the local hardware and network capacit ies meet the minimal requirements.