Heart disease patients miss out on vital scans
TENS OF thousands of heart patients across Britain are missing out on potentially lifesaving scans, doctors have warned.
Experts have estimated that at least 56,000 British angina patients were denied life-saving scans in the last year alone.
A shortage of scanners and radiologists means that patients are not receiving computed tomography (CT) heart scans to detect or rule out heart disease, the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) and the British Society of Cardiovascular Imaging (BSCI) said.
Historically, patients with chest pain are referred to have their heart function assessed by exercise tests.
But cardiac experts argue the tests cannot rule out underlying causes of angina – chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscles – such as the plaque that causes fatal heart attacks.
In England, it is recommended that patients with symptoms of angina should receive a heart scan called a computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA).
The RCR and the BSCI estimated that across the UK, 132,080 NHS patients should have had a CTCA test in 2017. But analysis from the organisation found the test was only offered to 75,000 people. They suggested that this means that at least 56,289 angina patients across Britain missed out CTCA scans.
Dr Giles Roditi, president of the BSCI, said: “In many hospitals it is easier for a runner with a dodgy knee to get a magnetic resonance scan than it is for a patient on the verge of a heart attack to get a CTCA. Deadly cases of heart disease are being missed because we can’t deliver these scans properly across the UK.”
RCR president Dr Nicola Strickland added: “It is remarkably sad that the CTCA technology exists to diagnose life-threatening heart disease before it kills people, but patients are being denied access because the UK Government and devolved administrations are failing to invest in training the radiologist doctors needed to report these scans, as well as the state-of-the-art CT scanners needed to perform them.”
Commenting on the analysis, Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “It’s worrying that there isn’t better access to CT scans across the UK, leaving some patients with heart disease without a potentially life-saving diagnosis.
“It is essential that these valuable scans are available to people who need them.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: “We’ve announced £3.9bn in new capital investment, and our historic long-term plan for the NHS, backed by an extra £20.5bn a year by 2023/24, will put our health service on a long-term sustainable footing.
“The number of clinical radiologists in England is up 29% since 2010 but we want to see numbers continue to rise. That’s why over the next three years we are enabling more doctors to specialise in clinical radiology.”
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “Health boards are increasing capacity to improve waiting times and access for cardiac diagnostic tests including cardiac CT.”