The Requirements of a Specialist Breast Centre

This article is an update of the requirements of a specialist breast centre, produced by EUSOMA and endorsed by the European Cancer Organisation as part of Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care (ERQCC) programme, and ESMO.

• To meet aspirations for comprehensive cancer control, healthcare organisations must consider the requirements in this article, paying particular attention to multidisciplinarity and patient-centred pathways from diagnosis, to treatment, to survivorship.
  
  
• The centrepiece of this article is the requirements section, comprising definitions; multidisciplinary structure; minimum case, procedure and staffing volumes; and detailed descriptions of the skills of, and resources needed by, members and specialisms in the multidisciplinary team in a breast centre.
  
  
• These requirements are positioned within narrative on European breast cancer epidemiology, the standard of care, challenges to delivering this standard, and supporting evidence, to enable a broad audience to appreciate the importance of establishing these requirements in specialist breast centres.

Read the publication here.