Multidisciplinary team meetings in cancerology: setting priorities for improvement

Resulting medical decision from a multidisciplinary team (MDT) meeting has to be accurate regarding to various patient criteria and relevant specialists participation. The target is to optimize treatment or management options for patients taking into account patients' benefit. The aim of our study was to examine quality criteria of MDT meeting processes, implementation of the MDT decision, and the follow-up of national or regional clinical guidelines. The results lead us to discuss about care management in cancer. Ten various medical specialities of MDT meetings were studied. Relevant multidisciplinarity varied between MDT meetings specialities and was effective between 55 and 100%. Implementation of the decisions that arise from MDT meetings was 86.3%. The most frequent grounds of non-application were patient refusal and new or previous unknown clinical data. The percentage of MDT meetings decisions following national or regional recommendations was 74%. The main reason of not following was the complexity of clinical patient circumstances. Participation in MDT meetings is more and more time-consuming related to enforce the completeness referred to the Plan Cancer (National recommendations). Leading to completeness raises questions about medical time employment and meaning of the MDT meeting for standard clinical cases. The priority seems to enforce multidisciplinarity rather than reach completeness.