Abstract
A critical pathway for the follow-up of postoperative lung cancer patients was introduced among our hospital and the regional healthcare institutes including private outpatient-clinics and a nursing home. This study researches the outcome after one year of implementation. Of53cases between January 2005 and April2006, 28 (52.8%) fitted the criteria for the pathway, were successfully followed-up mainly at twenty-two cooperative institutes and were periodically introduced to our hospital for further check-ups including computed tomograms. Among these, minor variances were observed in only3cases (9.7%). On the other hand, residual cases which were no pathway candidates included patients regularly visiting our hospital for other disorders (40%), faradvanced or early cases (16%), and patients needing adjuvant chemo (radio) therapy (16%). Although our interinstitutional critical pathway for postoperative lung cancer patients still needs some revision, its application is feasible and could be a powerful tool for the functional differentiation at outpatient clinics in Japan.
