Comparative analysis of radiotherapy LINAC downtime and failure modes in the UK, Nigeria and Botswana

Abstract

The lack of radiotherapy linear accelerators (LINACs) in Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMICs) has been recognised as a major barrier to providing quality cancer care in these regions, along with a shortfall in the number of highly qualified personnel. It is expected that additional challenges will be faced in operating precise, high tech radiotherapy equipment in these environments, and anecdotal evidence suggests that LINACs have greater downtime and higher failure rates of components than their counterparts in High-Income Countries. To guide future developments such as the design of a LINAC tailored for use in LMIC environments, it is important to take a data-driven approach to any re-engineering of the technology. However, no detailed statistical data on LINAC downtime and failure modes has been previously collected or presented in the literature. This work presents the first known comparative analysis of failure modes and downtime of current generation LINACs in radiotherapy centres, with the aim of determining any correlations between LINAC environment and performance. Logbooks kept by radiotherapy personnel on the operation of their LINAC were obtained and analysed from centres in Oxford (UK), Abuja, Benin, Enugu, Lagos, Sokoto (Nigeria) and Gaborone (Botswana). By deconstructing the LINAC into 12 different subsystems, it is found that the vacuum subsystem only fails in the LMIC centres and the failure rate in an LMIC environment is more than twice as large in 6 of the 12 subsystems compared to the High Income Country (HIC). Additionally, it is shown that despite accounting for only 3.4% of total number of faults, the LINAC faults which take more than an hour to repair account for 74.6% of the total downtime. The results of this study inform future attempts to mitigate the problems affecting LINACs in LMIC environments.