| Priority Category | Good Practice | Maximum acceptable | Criteria | Examples |
| A. Urgent |  | Within 24 hours | Patients with rapidly progressive complications of malignancy that require rapid treatment to prevent or minimise severe morbidity or life threat | Spinal cord compression
Superior vena cava obstruction
Cord equina compression
Major life-threatening haemorrhage not amenable to surgical intervention
Major upper airways or bronchial obstruction with stridor |
| B. Curative | | Within 2 weeks | Tumours for which radiation treatment usually results in 20 percent or better survival at five years and there is evidence that delay may compromise chance of cure
Patient fit to have radical radiation treatment | Head and neck cancer
Bladder cancer
Carcinoma oesophagus
Paediatric cancer
High grade Non Hodgkin’s
Lymphoma
Hodgkin’s Disease
Cervix cancer
Pre-operative radiation treatment |
| C. Palliative and other radical | Palliative treatment within 2 weeks or sooner according to severity of symptoms. | Within 4 weeks | Radical or adjuvant radiation treatment where there is no clear evidence that short delays are likely to affect the outcome | Prostate cancer
Post operative breast cancer
Post operative endometrial cancer
Skin cancer
Seminoma testis (stage I)
Brain tumours |
| D. Combined chemotherapy and radiation treatment | | Start date booked according to treatment schedule | Patients having combined radiation treatment and chemotherapy where safe, effective sequencing of treatment modalities is required
Tumours treated according to clinical trial or documented referenced national/international protocols | Anal cancer
Oesophageal cancer
Bladder cancer
Rectal cancer
Paediatric cancer
Hodgkin’s disease
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
Patients in clinical trials |