Mary Ann Cummings says she would have opted for free radiation treatment in the U.S., something offered to other breast cancer patients in B.C. this month, if she’d had the opportunity.
Mary Ann Cummings had to wait four months for radiation treatment following breast cancer surgery last fall, three months longer than the national benchmark.
The Canadian Cancer Society says on its website it typically takes three to four weeks to heal after surgery and research shows radiation therapy can be given up to eight to 12 weeks after surgery. The “recommended maximum” wait, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, is 28 days or four weeks.
Cummings questions whether the 95 per cent figure is still accurate. “Am I really an outlier? And if so, why would I be placed in the five per cent not attended to within six weeks?” Critics have cited inadequate compensation for workers and a shortage of equipment — such as MRIs, CT scanners, and linear accelerators, which deliver the radiation treatment — as the main challenges when it comes to timely radiation treatment.
In B.C., about 14,000 people receive radiation therapy each year, with that expected to increase by 1,000 new radiation patients over the next two years.But many patients with breast and prostate cancer can be treated with a total of five days of radiation, the ministry says. “This is a relatively new thing to do,” said a Health Ministry spokesperson. “The old way was to give three to six weeks of daily treatment, five days a week.
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