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There was a “slight recovery” in the number of people who were referred with suspected breast, lung, prostate and skin cancer last week, the HSE said. It comes after weekly electronic referrals were cut more than half after the introduction of the Covid-19 restriction measures.
Clinic electronic referrals fell 57% between January 6 and March 15 and March 16 and April 19. Suspected cases of skin cancer recorded the largest drop (71 percent), followed by lung cancer (61 percent), breast cancer (55 percent), and prostate cancer (50 percent).
Looking at the benchmark data week by week, there has been a slight recovery in the number of people referred last week [April 20-26th]”The HSE said.
The HSE has been monitoring the change in leads with suspected cancer symptoms with the help of data from Healthlink, a messaging system that doctors use to send electronic referrals. While the system is not used for each benchmark, “it is helpful to show recent trends,” the HSE said.
He said there has been a “concerted effort” to encourage the public to continue contacting their GP with symptoms unrelated to Covid, including those of possible cancer.
Breastcheck, CervicalCheck, BowelScreen and Diabetic RetinaScreen have been temporarily paused due to Covid-19.
The HSE said the situation was under review and that the programs would be restarted “when it is deemed safe to do so.”
Individually
Changes in the care of cancer patients are made individually, according to the Irish Cancer Society. “The Minister of Health and the HSE assured us that urgent treatment continues despite the coronavirus pandemic,” said a spokeswoman.
The charity said it was “concerned” about the drop in people attending their GP for reasons unrelated to Covid, “including concerns about possible cancer symptoms.”
Dr. Deirdre O’Mahony, medical oncologist consultant at Bon Secours Hospital in Cork and president of the Irish Society for Medical Oncology, said the break in screening services was “something we are all very concerned about.”
“The Irish Society of Medical Oncologists meets with the NCCP [National Cancer Control Programme] via conference call once a week since it all started. While our immediate concerns had to do with how we can manage established patients, in the last few weeks there has been a focus on how we are going to manage patients who are lost, not lost, I suppose, but only by virtue of the no presentation: where are they going to present and when are they going to present.
“I think unless we have diagnostic and screening tests and the ability to detect these cancers in a time-sensitive manner, we are going to see patients who will eventually present with a more advanced disease that could have a significant impact on their long-term long-term ”
Normal
Professor John Crown, a medical oncologist consultant at St. Vincent’s Hospital, said that if the services returned to “some degree of normality” within the next two to three months there would be “hopefully a relatively limited number of patients who would have suffered in a great road due to a delayed diagnosis of one or two months. ”
“The biggest problem is that even if they open everything in three months, that does not mean that everything will be fixed in three months,” he said.
“We are already dealing with a hospital system that has the longest waiting lists in Europe, our waiting lists are appalling, and then we take into account those two months of inactivity causing huge bottlenecks.”
Dr. Seamus O’Reilly, medical oncologist consultant at Cork University Hospital, said that services needed to be “unrolled gradually” and that the systems were being adjusted to “deal with the fact that Covid is going to be here for some time”.
“We are likely to see more virtual clinics in the future. This is more difficult, especially for new patients, due to the nuances of someone’s attention and body language during a physical evaluation.”
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