What a stupid f... mistake to stop treatment for cancer patients during lockdown

[alwayslosing]

Stopping the treatment for life threatening conditions was a stupid mistake that costs lives.
The stupid reason that the treatment can aggravate COVID 19 symptoms in case the patients gets it is a money making scam on behalf of the government.

Just watched the news about a lady that died because her cancer treatment was stopped. She could have lived longer and be with her boys. It made me so angry and frustrated that these people were not given the option to choose whether or not to continue the treatment. Choices were made for people and people died as a result.,

This is ridiculous...what kind of society are we living in? Is COVID 19 an excuse to stop treatments saving money and killing the sick?

This is not happening only in the UK but all over the world.

@alwayslosing I would assume her treatment was an immunosuppressant which would then make it dangerous if she caught COVID as she wouldn’t be able to fight it off.

Decisions like this are extremely difficult to make but you have to trust the patient’s safety is being put at the heart of it.

@RoseAndRose yes I did read it.
No it's not the person in the article. It was a lady that had bowel cancer

@alwayslosing

One of my friends (she's in her 60s) has her arthritis treatment stopped. Why was that? She is in so much pain she cannot walk from the living room to the kitchen...she was told the treatment can interfere with the COVID treatment in case she gets it. Her consultant told her that the information came from the top ( of the NHS) and he was not allowed to continue the treatment Let's all live in the fear that we might get Covid then.

Some rheumatology treatments are also chemotherapy which destroy the immune system leaving no defence from Covid.

They had to weigh up the risks and benefits unfortunately and do what was safest.... I know it doesn't sound right and she's in a lot of pain but they did what thought was best for her

Not just cancer treatments. My oldest friend has suffered irreversible damage because her local area could not give treatment for pernicious anaemia. It wasn't a matter of assessing risk, it was a blanket ban.

This grieved me too. I am in Birmingham and my aunts treatment stopped for breast cancer in March. Chemotherapy has only been resumed last week. My aunt believes she is going to die.
I have no words.

My cancer treatment was wholly unaffected - other than some consultant appointments being by telephone

They moved many operations to a ‘clean’ nearby private hospital

The Marsden remained open and functioning close to normal

There was a lot of cancer treatment going on

It’s the pause in screening that it a concern

That and the utterly wrong assumption that cancer isn’t being treated (it is) or that GPs are shut (they’re not) which means people are not seeing a doctor in the first place.

The 2WW cancer pathway remained open throughout. It was only then, when treatment options were being decided that Covid safety became one of the (many) factors to consider in choosing the best/safest/most effective options

There were more changes were to end of life care, rather than new diagnoses.

I'm sorry I don't understand why people have not been given a choice in the matter.

My apologies

When you said 'no it was a lady' I did not think it was possible you had read about Stevie and her life.

I would like to know what happened in other countries - was so much health care stopped there too?

I feel the fact so much was stopped shows how close the the wire the NHS is.

I do not criticise the NHS, I believe it is hugely underfunded and the obsession with privatising has made it less efficient, not more.

Our healthcare system is not that great. Not due to the staff in it, but due to the last ten years of underfunding.

One of my friends (she's in her 60s) has her arthritis treatment stopped. Why was that?

I would imagine it's one of the arthritis's caused by an autoimmune disorder. The treatment deliberately weakens the immune system, to stop the body attacking itself, but obviously in s situation like covid would place her at significant risk of getting very sick and increase her risk of dying.

i feel the fact that so much was stopped shows how close to the wire the NHS is

This. Years of underfunding thanks to austerity had left the NHS on its knees - and then Covid arrived. It had to stop being a health service and become a Covid service.

How the hell the NHS is supposed to catch up and sort out the mess is beyond me.

Yes, stupid oncologists, killing people.

They don't know what they're doing, do they, OP? What they need is you to go in, explain, and sort things out for them.

In my rural area of Scotland everything was stopped, even though we’ve had consistently low cases etc. I’m not surprised that experts are warning a rise in excess cancer deaths, I work in community nursing so have a lot of palliative and end of life patients and I said to my colleagues I could see us having a rise in this over the coming year or so. I have a 5 year old under the hospital for her eyes who should have been tested ready for p1 and desperately needs new glasses, yet to hear anything. It’s covidnhs at the minute

I know at least one person who was diagnosed and received life saving cancer treatment during March and April so cancer treatment didn't stop for everyone. I agree though that for some very ill patients most likely with very small chances of recovery, they may nothave been given some treatments where it was judged the risk outweighed the possible be benefits, where in a non Covid situation the treatment might have been tried as a last resort.

I do think the stop on screening ban
lead to more deaths though . Also the stopping or sever rationing of B12 injections mentioned by a PP is appalling, though I am not sure if that was widely applied.

Not just cancer sadly many other treatments. Our marvellous NHS. Incidentally it's not being that quick to get back to work either.

It really was a ridiculous situation. ICUs were manic places but there were many hospital departments where staff sat there twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do.

Meanwhile mild covid cases were to told to stay at home until their treatments significantly worsened, rather than admitting early for tests and treatment. Private hospitals were paid large sums to take some of the surgery waiting lists but very few were actually performed.

@DuineArBith the usual treatment is a vitamin B-12 injection every 3 months, where does she normally go for her injections and why wasn't she able to ?

I saw my GP on Friday - for something fairly minor and non-emergency. He said that the number of excess deaths is going to remain higher than average for years because they've never been so quiet. People are not seeing the doctor for lumps, bumps, changes in their body and other issues which could indicate serious problems. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can push a treatable cancer into a non-treatable one.

It's a scandal and the NHS isn't reverting back to normal quickly enough.

My Dad’s treatment was stopped and, unfortunately as his cancer is so aggressive it wasn’t the right decision, as the tumour then spread so quickly he had to be rushed in this month to have emergency treatment in two different hospitals, exposing him to more COVID risk. He will undoubtedly die much sooner than if he’d continued his chemo.

I can’t allow myself to get angry about this, as if I start I won’t stop! I have to believe that the doctors assessed each case and made what they thought was the right decision based on the information they had. No one has a vested interest in denying my Dad his treatment, so even though it transpires it was the wrong decision, I can’t go down the route of blaming the doctors.

@SockYarn

I saw my GP on Friday - for something fairly minor and non-emergency. He said that the number of excess deaths is going to remain higher than average for years because they've never been so quiet. People are not seeing the doctor for lumps, bumps, changes in their body and other issues which could indicate serious problems. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can push a treatable cancer into a non-treatable one.

It's a scandal and the NHS isn't reverting back to normal quickly enough.

Personally I think this push to phone/video consultations, while for the best in the long term, has happened far too quickly. It gives the impression that the GP practice is out of bounds and a ‘last resort’ type of place.

I went to my new GP a few weeks ago to pick up some new patient registration forms and was strongly rebuked by the receptionists (‘we don’t want people coming in you see’).

We have been going out and giving vit B-12 injections routinely to those on our caseload who are prescribed them. We have also taken on newly diagnosed people who require the loading dose during lockdown.

Cancer treatment, especially chemotherapy has continued in the geograpical area I work. Some people have had a cycle postponed due to blood results which happened before Covid.

I think people forget that medics, nurses and hospital admin staff also got sick and therefore normal treatment couldn't continue as there was no one to do it. For example my entire rheumatology department (consultsnts) all got sick at the same time, and we're off work for several weeks - one was off for a month. There was simply no one to do the clinics/conduct the treatment any way. We also had a crisis in ICU where the vast majority of consultsnts caught the virus at once and were off sick, surgery had to be stopped (including cancer work) to redeploy the anaesthetists to ICU to look after those patients.

We all know the NHS is on its knees in normal circumstances, this was unprecedented and no one knew how bad it would be or for how long.

In the hospital that I work in, chemo patients were reviewed and their treatment adjusted to reduce the frequency of them attending hospital where possible and safe, the administration of treatment was moved to a safe site (private hospital).

It wasn't a money making scam, or saving scam as that's not how NHS finances work. You don't stop money in one department and save it and therefore spend it else where it doesn't work like that. What money will have been saved? They still will have paid all the workers in those areas? You might argue that they saved the cost of the consumables/drugs, but that's insignificant in terms of finances in comparison to pay. For example, my budget is 95% pay and only 5% consumables for my department.

It is true some people's treatment or care has been affected, sad, regrettable but what else could we do? Extra wards were needed due to the influx of sick patients. These wards need medics and nurses at the very least - so medics and nurses were pulled from clinics to man the wards.

@thedancingbear if you have nothing productive to say then say nothing.

@SockYarn

I saw my GP on Friday - for something fairly minor and non-emergency. He said that the number of excess deaths is going to remain higher than average for years because they've never been so quiet. People are not seeing the doctor for lumps, bumps, changes in their body and other issues which could indicate serious problems. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can push a treatable cancer into a non-treatable one.

It's a scandal and the NHS isn't reverting back to normal quickly enough.

Gp receptionists are gate keeping aggressively as well