Southwest Oncology Group

Overview
The Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) is a National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored organization that conducts clinical trials in adult cancers.

SWOG was created by the NCI in 1956, and its was headquartered in Houston, Texas. At first it was called the Southwest Cancer Chemotherapy Study Group (SWCCSG). Its primary purpose was to study leukemia, a cancer of the blood which primarily affects children. Then in 1958, the NCI directed the SWCCSG to include the study of adult cancers, and separate administrative divisions were created for pediatric and adult cancers. The name was then changed to Southwest Oncology Group to reflect its new mission. Although most member organizations of SWOG were located in the Southwestern United States, the group spread to include members all over the United States and Canada.

Today, SWOG consists of over 250 institutions all over the United States and Canada, and is headquartered at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Quality Assurance
The Southwest Oncology Group has all of its protocol driven cases reviewed at the Quality Assurance Review Center (QARC). As mandated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), every radiotherapy department participating in a SWOG study must submit their data to QARC for review. QARC is located in Providence, Rhode Island and reviews thousands of cases per year. The center was founded in 1977 as a not-for-profit healthcare organization designed to provide quality assurance for CALGB studies. Radiotherapy data from around one-thousand hospitals in both the United States and abroad is reviewed and archived at QARC.

Another center for quality assurance is the Radiological Physics Center (RPC) in Houston, Texas. The primary responsibility of the RPC is to assure the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and its cooperative groups like SWOG that all participating institutions are following the guidelines set-forth for the physics-related aspects of radiotherapy. Established in 1968, the RPC has consistently received funding from the NCI in order to perform the aforementioned mission.