• 2/25/2007
  • London, UK
  • staff
  • This London (www.thisislondon.co.uk)

Cancer patients are having to wait months beyond recommended dates for treatment to prevent the disease returning, say frustrated consultants.

After tumours are removed by surgery, patients should get follow-up radiotherapy within 28 days, according to Royal College of Radiologists guidelines.

But in many areas the wait is much longer.

In Kent, for instance, the waiting time for breast cancer patients is at least three months. Three patients have seen the disease return during the long gap between operation and radiotherapy.

Peter Jones, consultant surgeon in Maidstone, says: ‘We believe that it’s totally unacceptable.’

Explaining why he is going public with news of the situation on tomorrow night’s Channel 4 Dispatches programme, NHS: Where Did All The Money Go?, he says: ‘We have been left with no alternative but to bring this to the attention of the media.’

He is backed by Dr David Dodwell at Cookridge Hospital in Leeds, who says: ‘Delayed radiotherapy for a range of cancers increases the risk of local recurrence and other problems.

That’s in head and neck cancers and sarcomas, cervix cancer and lung cancer, as well as breast cancer.’

Five UK radiotherapy units have an average wait of 28 days, which means many patients are waiting longer.

In two centres, more than three-quarters of patients are missing the 28-day window.

But although the Department of Health has set targets for initial cancer treatment, there is none set for post-operative therapy.

Shadow Health Minister Mike Penning said: +It seems astonishing that the Government is prioritising cancer treatment but it’s not focusing with similar enthusiasm to get patients their radiotherapy.

‘Consultants must be frustrated because a lot of their good work will has been in vain if people don’t get radiotherapy before a recurrence.’

And Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, who is on the Health Select Committee, said: ‘I will be writing to the Health Secretary.

‘The Government needs to find a way of achieving the 28-day limit set by the Royal College of Radiologists. No cases should fall outside this clinical recommendation.’

In a further indictment of NHS bureaucracy, the programme features the video diary of a hospital consultant who describes the frustrations of the cost-cutting culture.

Dermatologist Dr Barry Monk says: ‘I think just about everybody in the NHS is frustrated by the enormous amounts of money we see wasted. That wouldn,t matter so much if clinical services weren,t being squeezed.’

He claims that colleagues at other hospitals have been told not to treat patients too quickly, but instead to keep them waiting for a minimum length of time.