Britain on edge of ‘cancer avalanche’ which could cripple NHS – Daily Express
A dossier of complaints logged about the care of cancer patients reveals how stretched cancer treatment has become during the pandemic and its restrictions. The cancer complaints casebook, drawn from Freedom of Information Act requests to NHS hospitals in England, found in just the first seven months of this year there were 392 official complaints logged about the care of cancer patients.
And the true tally is expected to be even higher as more than one third of Trusts either failed to …….
A dossier of complaints logged about the care of cancer patients reveals how stretched cancer treatment has become during the pandemic and its restrictions. The cancer complaints casebook, drawn from Freedom of Information Act requests to NHS hospitals in England, found in just the first seven months of this year there were 392 official complaints logged about the care of cancer patients.
And the true tally is expected to be even higher as more than one third of Trusts either failed to respond to the survey or said they were unable to provide data.
The report shows dozens of cancer patients have been denied potentially life-saving treatment during the pandemic.
Hospitals have been besieged by complaints from anxious patients and their relatives that vital treatment and tests have been forgotten.
Relatives have complained about the mental anguish they and their loved ones have had to endure as a result of cancer treatment being halted as so much NHS capacity was taken up by Covid patients.
One family complained their relative died in hospital and not only had they not been able to visit them because of Covid restrictions but they had not been told they had cancer.
Other complaints included in the freedom of information reports included a cancer patient worried about the recurrence of a lump being told the earliest appointment they could have was in ten weeks’ time.
Another case saw a patient sent into hospital for a crucial operation only for it to be cancelled on the day and rescheduled for a month after they had originally been due for surgery.
Another patient at the same Trust was said to have endured months of pain and discomfort because doctors allegedly failed to read his scans properly, which showed the true extent of the progression of their cancer.
The dossier did not reveal the final outcome of the cases.
A report by the National Audit Office found up to 740,000 potential cancer cases that should have been urgently referred by GPs have been “missed” since the first lockdown because people have either been reluctant to go to their doctor or could not get an appointment.
Karol Sikora, a consultant oncologist and professor of medicine at Buckingham Medical School, said: “We have huge problems in the UK with our capacity to diagnose cancer. It’s really difficult for GPs to identify cancer patients without getting some sort of imaging – CT or MRI scans. And the waiting time for these has grown dramatically.
“In Europe most patients with cancer start their treatment within two weeks of referral even during the waves of Covid.
Here many patients are left in limbo for months joining multiple waiting lists for scans and biopsies. …….
