As an endometrial cancer survivor, Linda Luyt gets quite anxious waiting for the results of her annual Pap test to show she is still free of the disease.
It usually takes between three and six weeks to receive a letter with the all clear, she said, noting that her doctor would call sooner with any abnormal results.But this year, her ninth since cancer surgery, Luyt has been waiting for two months since her Pap test in October and getting results could very well take much longer. When she called her doctor's office to inquire, she was told they had only received results in November for tests conducted in June.
Pap tests can detect pre-cancerous cell changes in the cervix. Luyt worries not just for herself, but for people who may find out they had cancer growing inside them while awaiting delayed test results. As well, LifeLabs – which processes nearly 700,000 Pap tests a year – said there has been a global decline in the number of cytotechnologists, the specialists who search for pre-cancerous cellular changes. Only 12 to 14 new cytotechnologists graduate each year in Canada, the company said.
"But what's starting to happen now is everybody's going back in to see their family doctor, and they're getting their physicals and they're getting Pap smears and surgeries are ramping up. So all of those tests are going into this bottleneck of this very specialized group." NDP health critic France Gelinas asked about Luyt's situation in question period last week, and Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the government is investing in the health system.
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