Clinical pathways in gastric cancer care

The diagnostic–therapeutic pathways (DTPs) are emerging as useful instruments for clinical management of complex diseases as gastric cancer, whose treatment is challenging and requires a multidisciplinary approach. However, the DPTs of patients with gastric cancer are still not defined yet. The aim of this study was to define the optimal DPT to be applied for patients with gastric cancer in the Veneto region. Rather than defining the ideal DTPs a priori, we conducted a preliminary research by analyzing the differences in the actual DPTs for patients with gastric cancer among different hospitals (hub and spokes) in Veneto. Then, the final DPT was elaborated based on the current available best clinical evidences; however, also the areas of homogeneity among the actual DPTs of the included centers as well as the critical issues that had emerged by our preliminary analysis were taken into account for pathway design. High heterogeneity in actual DTPs of patients with gastric cancer was observed among the analyzed centres. Moreover, some of the major criticisms have been found at crucial points of the current pathways. Based on these data, a reference path that is applicable to the whole-regional health network was constructed. The reference DTP is focused on multidisciplinary team management of patients with gastric cancer. Clinical pathways are essential tools to properly manage complex diseases such as gastric cancer. As such, more efforts should be done to implement their use.