Interesting link to this weeks example:
Interesting link to last weeks example:
telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8423891/Cancer-patients-denied-last-hope-robot-surgery.html
It’s an absolute disgrace, and I’m astonished that we tolerate this.
And this week there was an East Midlands BBC report on the refusal to fund GammaKnife for a breast cancer patient with brain mets who had been accepted for treatment by NHS in Sheffield - the PCT claims she did not meet the criteria that included “stable condition” - it’s too easy to write criteria that eliminate most cases for funding; at least the SouthEast is honest about their policy!! (not that I agree with the policy…)
Totally agree Fran. The South East Coast Specialised Funding Group (who consider funding applications on behalf of PCT’s in Sussex, Surrey and Kent), have produced a policy document that say’s they are prepared to fund gamma-knife for head and neck cancers, but there are so many pre-conditions, in terms of the current status of the tumour, the treatment that must have been tried / not tried prior to referral etc, that in reality all but a handful of patients qualify. (and of course if you require Cyberknife, TomoTherapy or SIRT you definitely wont get funding).
There was another thread on here about the fantastic 10 year survival rate for stage 4 BC achieved at Anderson MD in Texas. They were achieving a 23% survival rate in 2004 - our survival rate was just 8% in 2010. Anderson are re-nound for treating cancer very aggressively and combining systemic and localised treatments such as stereotactic radiotherapy.
Just wondering when breast cancer sufferers are going to get together and do something about this kind of thing ?