Pneumologie
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Quality assurance and quality-management have been well anchored in social legislation for years. Peer-reviews to assure process-quality and quality of outcomes have been conducted repeatedly in centres for pulmonary medicine, facilities for pulmonary rehabilitation as well as centres for sleep-medicine. By means of a pilot study we wanted to investigate if assurance of process-quality is feasible and if a peer review system turns out to be a suitable method in pulmonary practice. ⋯ For every item a graphic ranking in terms of benchmarking was generated for each individual report. Since peers were reviewers and subjects of review at the same time, they can now clearly improve and assure their diagnostic and therapeutic process-quality in patients with bronchial asthma and COPD by means of the experience they gained during the review process, as well as by the assessment they received. We were able to demonstrate that a peer-review-system is appropriate to assure process-quality in pulmonary practice and that it is feasible to achieve a continuous assurance and improvement of quality in the long run.
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In the last decade there have been important innovations in the treatment of lung tumors. New combined modality therapies are becoming standard and require a network of cooperating partners. ⋯ In the second part single drugs are described with their typical effects and side effects from the viewpoint of a clinician. A following part II will discuss new "targeted" biologicals.