Online Adaptive Radiation Therapy and Opportunity Cost

PURPOSE: Changes in patient anatomy and tumor geometry pose a challenge to ensuring consistent target coverage and organ-at-risk sparing; online adaptive radiation therapy (ART) accounts for these interfractional changes by facilitating replanning before each treatment. This project explored the opportunity cost of computed tomography (CT)–based online ART by evaluating time and human resource requirements. Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) was employed to determine the cost of this time to assess if the dosimetric benefit is worthwhile. METHODS AND MATERIALS: CT-based online ART was recently employed at our institution and has been used to treat pelvic disease sites (prostate, prostate bed, prostate with nodal coverage, bladder, rectum); data points from all adaptively treated patients (415 fractions) were used. Time taken for each adaptive fraction before treatment, which at our facility is best represented by the duration between 2 cone beam CT scans, was used as a broadly applicable and transferable metric, representing the additional time required for ART on top of standard image guided radiation therapy. Dosimetric effect was also considered by taking the difference of planning target volume V100% for the scheduled and adapted plans. Using recently validated TDABC at this facility, the per fraction cost of ART was determined, reflecting the added cost of ART on top of image guided radiation therapy. RESULTS: A median time of 15.97 (interquartile range, 13.23-18.83) additional minutes was required for each adaptive fraction. TDABC demonstrated an average minimum cost per adapted fraction of $103.58. Dosimetric differences between V100% of the scheduled versus adapted plan showed a mean dosimetric difference of 15.8%. CONCLUSIONS: Although online ART decreases the uncertainty of anatomic shifts, each adaptive fraction requires more staff time, delaying completion of other tasks and increasing resource utilization. Although toxicity benefits require further studies, the implementation of progressively complex radiation therapy technologies, like ART, requires consideration of the time and human resource requirements and subsequent opportunity cost.