With Melbourne’s lockdown ending this week,doctors expect a surge in the number of people needing treatment for a range of medical conditions,including cancers not diagnosed during Victoria’s second and third waves of coronavirus.
Thousands of cancer diagnoses were missed over the past year.Nic Walker
Estimates from the Victorian Cancer Registry show almost 3500 cancers were missed between April last year and mid-August this year. Half of those missed were for prostate cancer,a further 30 per cent involved melanomas and a concerning 7 per cent involved head and neck cancers.
The trend is likely to present further challenges for Victoria’s public health system,which has been under immense strain for months,characterised by overworked at every shift;an that the Australian Defence Force was called in to assist;and.
“It is a real concern that,as we recover from COVID,we’re going to have a significant number of undiagnosed cancers that will flow into the health system and require care,” said Grant McArthur,the executive director of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance.
“That will further exacerbate pressures on the health system to get most patients to have the appropriate treatment.”
Professor Grant McArthur says as Victoria recovers from COVID-19,there will be a significant number of undiagnosed cancer patients who require care.Josh Robenstone
Melbourne GP Ines Rio,chair of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network,agreed.
She said that even before the pandemic intensified,general practitioners already found it difficult to get timely specialist outpatient services for patients who didn’t have private health insurance.
“It was already too slow,so there’s no doubt this is going to make it harder on the system moving forward,” said Dr Rio,who is a member of the COVID-19 Cancer Network.
“A lot of these diagnoses are going to pop up in the next year and in some cases there will be staged progression. In other words,their cases will be more advanced,they will need more treatment and more intervention. But that will involve a clogging up of the system when we were already having trouble with elective surgery waiting lists.”
The state’s latest figures suggest there were almost 67,000 Victorians on the elective surgery waiting list,with some surgeries,including hip and knee replacements,requiring patients to wait between two and three years for care.
As,doctors say urgent category-one elective surgery has also been postponed because of the increasing shortage of beds in Victorian hospitals. It has meant people suffering painful conditions have had operations cancelled to make room for COVID-19 patients.
Category-one surgeries are classified as procedures that should be performed within 30 days. Some also have the potential to deteriorate quickly,resulting in patient emergencies,such as a breast lump or cancerous skin lesion.
Premier Daniel Andrews said the government provided “literally hundreds of millions of dollars earlier this year to try and catch up on the backlog from last year”. However,COVID’s deadly Delta strain changed everything,he said.
Education Minister James Merlino said Victoria reached two major vaccine milestones on Thursday.
“We could not keep it under control,and months and months later we had to modify elements for elective surgery again. That wasn’t a choice made lightly,” he said. “Next year,there’ll be a big effort to catch up as well.”
While the true extent of missed cancer diagnoses is not yet known – a full report from the Victorian Cancer Registry won’t be released until December – the latest data provides a rolling snapshot based on cancer registry notifications from hospitals and pathology providers.
According to the figures,the majority of missing diagnoses involve people aged between 60 and 74.
However,Victorian Cancer Registry director Sue Evans said there was good news among the “doom and gloom” with the data showing higher rates of screenings for lung cancer and breast cancer than last year.
“The thing that we really want to focus on is making sure that people see their GP for screening and to have that primary health check,” she said.
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