Europa Donna Ireland Conference:THE CHANCES of cancer patients in the Republic beating their disease are significantly lower than in many other European countries, the State's director of cancer control has confirmed.
Prof Tom Keane told a conference in Dublin on Saturday that the five-year survival rate for cancer patients in the Republic at 45 per cent was 10 per cent less than in the best-performing countries.
He said this 10 per cent was "a huge difference", putting Ireland "considerably behind the best performing countries" and leaving significant room for improvement.
The survival rates are deduced from data collected between 1999 and 2004, he said.
Prof Keane added that 50 per cent of men and women in Ireland who get lung cancer got no treatment whatsoever because their disease was so advanced at presentation. This was something he planned to change, he said.
He stressed that the transfer of breast cancer services from smaller hospitals to eight designated cancer centres in order to improve outcomes was now well advanced.
He said the only place where there was still significant resistance to these plans was at Sligo General Hospital but he hoped the transfer of services from there to Galway would take place in the first quarter of next year.
He said services at Drogheda would transfer to Beaumont in Dublin in the next two months with two breast surgeons from Drogheda then spending half their time in Beaumont and the other half giving follow-up care locally.
Services at Mayo General Hospital would transfer to Galway in coming weeks, he said, with the breast surgeon in Mayo performing surgery in Galway and also providing follow-up care in Castlebar.
There was also an agreement whereby breast cancer services would move from Tallaght Hospital to St James's Hospital, he said, as long as St James's gave back to Tallaght a similar amount of other work.
He added that the board of the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital in Cork had now indicated its approval "with some caveats" to its breast services moving to Cork University Hospital.
Prof Keane, who pulled out of a planned appearance on the Late Late Show on Friday night, because he did not want to have to discuss individual patient cases on live TV, also told delegates attending the conference, organised by Europa Donna Ireland, that one of his biggest challenges was restoring public confidence in services following several cases of misdiagnoses.
He said there was huge anxiety among women, some of it fuelled by "sensational headlines" in newspapers.
Meanwhile, Prof Niall O'Higgins, head of the department of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, told delegates that speedy access to treatment was as important for patients as having good clinicians.
"It's no use having Tiger Woods or Pádraig Harrington on your team if people can't get access to their skills," he said.
"It's no use having a team in place if there is going to be delay in access to clinics or to hospital treatments."
People with suspicious symptoms when referred by a GP should be seen at a specialist centre within two weeks, he said.
"If the diagnosis is delayed for a week or two or three or four, it's probably not of biological importance in the course of the disease. But it sure is of importance to the woman, with anxiety unallayed for weeks.
"But if, of course, the diagnosis is delayed for many months, well then there is considerable scientific evidence that the outcome worsens," he added.
Meanwhile, Prof O'Higgins said the work of the eight designated cancer centres now being established should be audited annually and those found to be consistently underperforming should not be funded.
Dr Tracey Cooper, chief executive of the Health Information and Quality Authority, told the conference that an audit of symptomatic breast cancer services at the specialist centres, as well as at some private hospitals which volunteered to take part, was almost complete.
She said it indicated there are some excellent services and that "there is still a journey for some to move forward". Those which needed to improve would have to develop plans to implement recommendations made, she said, adding that the services would be audited again next year.