International best practice is for women who have had breast-conserving surgery to get radiation treatment within 8-12 weeks, but some NZers are waiting much longer. File photo. Photo: 123rf
More cancer patients are waiting too long for potentially life-saving radiation treatment.
Advocates say some breast cancer patients are waiting weeks longer than best practice, putting them at risk of the disease recurring.
Lucy - not her real name - had her breast tumour picked up by her first-ever mammogram in March, the week before her 40th birthday.
She had surgery at Gisborne Hospital to remove the tumour on 24 April, and was then referred to Waikato for radiation treatment.
"The general sort of consensus is they couldn't give me any clarity on dates," she said.
"It probably would have started at the end of July. There's a recommended time-frame of 12 weeks, so that would have put me just outside that time-frame."
Lucy, who has three young children and a business, started radiotherapy at a private hospital in Wellington last week, paid for by insurance.
"I feel like they're more in touch with my notes and my medical history. They kind of speak to me as a person, not just 'cancer'."
Another breast cancer patient, in her mid-50s, paid privately for a biopsy to avoid the 6-8 week wait to get diagnosed in the public system over the Christmas period.
"If I had continued privately it was going to cost up to $80,000, so I opted to go back into the public system."
She had surgery in March but was told to expect to wait 10-12 weeks for radiotherapy.
She waited 16 weeks.
"I was anxious for those 16 weeks - it's cancer, not a cold - and any time you hear it, it's not good.
"When I put it to radiologist why it was taking so long, he said he didn't have an explanation for it, they were just short-staffed and that was it'"
Breast Cancer Foundation chief executive Ah-Leen Rayner said international best practice was for women who have had breast-conserving surgery to get radiation treatment within 8-12 weeks.
Longer delays can as much as double the chance of breast cancer coming back.
"Women particularly in the Waikato are facing long delays particularly to radiation treatment, but that's elsewhere as well. There's a shortage of machines, a shortage of therapists."
A recent report by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists showed the number of full-time specialists has risen nine percent in the past decade - but this was outstripped by a 29 percent rise in treatments.
Last year, Dunedin Hospital lost its accreditation to train new radiation oncologists after it was left with just three specialists instead of eight.
Christchurch-based radiation oncologist Melissa James, who is on the college's New Zealand committee, said the government had upped the number of trainees in the past few years - but it would take time to turn around a decade of under-investment.
"We need urgent action to make sure we don't have a collapse, a spreading collapse of radiation oncology across the country."
About half of all cancer patients could benefit from radiation therapy, yet several business cases to build more machines to deliver that therapy had stalled, she said.
"We are desperately wanting to get that to patients when they need it and we are very much aware that often that isn't possible.
"And that's very hard on patients both psychologically and sometimes in terms of cancer outcomes. So as a clinician, that's really tough."
Health New Zealand's latest quarterly report shows cancer wait times have worsened, with more than 18 percent of patients waiting longer than a month to start any treatment, in the first three months of this year.
Health New Zealand has been approached for comment.