Prostate care failing half of NHS patients
Patchy access to best therapy
THE NHS is still failing to deliver the best diagnosis and treatment to thousands of men with prostate cancer, says the first national audit of services.
It shows a ‘worryingly vast variation’ in access to advanced MRI scanning and the latest radiotherapy techniques.
Half of all men with the disease do not receive all the support services they should in hospitals, the National Prostate Cancer Audit found.
Four out of five radiation centres in England do not offer brachytherapy – which uses radioactive seeds planted inside the prostate and can help half of men retain their sex lives. The service is not provided at a single centre in Labour-run Wales.
Prostate cancer is the commonest cancer in men. In the UK, more than 41,000 are diagnosed each year leading to around 10,000 deaths annually. Survival rates are below Europe averages.
The report, the first audit of how services are organised and delivered by 153 NHS trusts in England and Wales, found they are increasingly using advanced techniques but there is ‘room for improvement’. It says brachytherapy is recommended for those with high risk cancer but is provided only by 11 of the 54 radiation centres in England and by none in Wales.
One in four hospitals in England and two in five in Wales do not have the most sophisticated form of MRI, an imaging technique that can better detect cancer and spare men unnecessary biopsies.
The ‘new standard’ of intensity modulated radiotherapy – which helps focus the radiation to the shape of the prostate cancer and spare healthy tissue – is not available at one in ten English radiotherapy centres. It is available at all ten hospitals providing prostate cancer care in Wales.
Most damningly, only half of men in England and 60 per cent in Wales can get the support they need, ranging from advice on sexual and continence problems to counselling. Owen Sharp, of Prostate Cancer UK, said the findings could not be ignored and variations in care had to be tackled ‘head on’.