A quality assurance program is a mandatory prerequisite for obtaining the high level of accuracy required for radiotherapy. This paper reports the results of part of the routine quality control tests for linear accelerators at the National Cancer Institute, Brazil, performed monthly over a period of two years. These tests included dose output and beam quality indicator. The results were compared with the guidelines of the AAPM TG-40 protocol. The results for the photon beams have shown dose output variations of up to 12%; for electron beams, the largest deviation found was 10%. The fluctuations observed in the beam quality indicator for the electron beams were greater than for the photon beams. These results strongly emphasize the importance of a quality assurance program in radiotherapy services in order to allow prompt corrections of the dose delivered to the patient.
Quality control; Dose output; Beam quality indicator; Linear accelerator
