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Found 1,490 results
  1. Content Article
    Prevention of Future Deaths Reports (PFDs) made by coroners to address concerns arising from inquests can provide powerful leverage for change, although the reality is that health and social care organisations would generally rather avoid a PFD if possible because they also highlight - in a very public way - concerns about how their services operate which can, in turn, lead to further regulatory scrutiny, principally from the CQC. The need for more consistency in terms of thresholds for making PFDs and the form these take, plus the Chief Coroner’s strong commitment to ensuring that PFDs do what they are designed to do - i.e. harness learning from deaths - have been key drivers behind a recent re-vamping of the existing Chief Coroner’s guidance note on this. What do health and social care organisations need to know about the revised PFD guidance? This briefing looks in more detail about what’s changed (and what hasn’t).
  2. News Article
    Three “major” reviews are being launched into a struggling teaching trust in response to growing concerns over bullying and poor workplace culture. Birmingham and Solihull integrated care board has begun a series of investigations into University Hospitals Birmingham, whose chief executive announced he was standing down last month. The first review will get under way immediately and will focus on specific allegations made recently on BBC Newsnight. These include patient safety concerns, the “bullying” of clinicians and the issues raised by a review of 12 patient deaths undertaken by former consultant Dr Manos Nikolousis in 2017. It will be led by an “experienced senior independent clinician” from outside the local health system who is expected to report by the end of January. The second and third investigations will review the trust’s leadership and broader cultural issues respectively. The probes will be carried out with UHB and NHS England. Both are expected to report in the first half of 2023. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 9 December 2022
  3. News Article
    The parents of a 25-year-old man left to die in a cell by a negligent prison nurse given responsibility for 800 inmates have told how the conditions in which their son died will haunt them for ever. The case – the 27th death in just five years at HMP Nottingham – was said to illustrate the desperate state of Britain’s understaffed and increasingly dangerous prison system. Alex Braund was being held on remand awaiting trial when he fell ill in his cell with the first signs of pneumonia on 6 March 2020. Four days later, on the morning of 10 March, after a series of ill-fated attempts by Braund’s cellmate to get prison staff to take the situation seriously, the young man collapsed. Prison staff responded to an emergency bell rung by Braund’s cellmate at 6.55am, but they initially only looked through the cell hatch, taking five minutes to enter the cell in order to give CPR. Braund was subsequently taken to Queen’s medical centre in Nottingham, where he was pronounced dead at 11.44am of cardiac arrest caused by pneumonia. The jury at an inquest at Nottinghamshire coroner’s court found there had been a “continuous failure to provide adequate healthcare”, with a prison officer told by a nurse a few hours before Braund’s death that there was “nothing to be done at this time of night”. Questioning during the hearing revealed that the nurse, who has since lost her job and been reported to the nursing and midwifery council, had amended her records on the morning of Braund’s death. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 December 2022
  4. News Article
    There have been five recorded deaths within seven days of an invasive Strep A diagnosis in children under 10 in England this season, the UK Health Security Agency has said. A child under the age of 10 has also died in Wales after contracting the infection. Group A strep bacteria can cause many infections, ranging from minor illnesses to deadly diseases, but serious complications and deaths are rare. According to UKHSA data, there were 2.3 cases of invasive disease per 100,000 children aged one to four this year in England, compared with an average of 0.5 in the pre-pandemic seasons (2017 to 2019). There have also been 1.1 cases per 100,000 children aged five to nine, compared with the pre-pandemic average of 0.3 (2017 to 2019). The UKHSA said investigations are under way following reports of an increase in lower respiratory tract Group A Strep infections in children over the past few weeks, which have caused severe illness. It added that there is no evidence to suggest a new strain of Strep A is circulating, and the increase is most likely related to high amounts of circulating bacteria and social mixing. Read full story Source: Sky News, 3 December 2022
  5. News Article
    Intensive care doctors in Germany have warned that hospital paediatric units in the country are stretched to breaking point in part due to rising cases of respiratory infections among infants. The intensive care association DIVI said the seasonal rise in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases and a shortage of nurses was causing a “catastrophic situation” in hospitals. RSV is a common, highly contagious virus that infects nearly all babies and toddlers by the age of two, some of whom can fall seriously ill. Experts say the easing of coronavirus pandemic restrictions means RSV is affecting a larger number of babies and children, whose immune systems aren’t primed to fend it off. Cases of RSV and other respiratory illnesses have also increased in the UK and in the US, which is also suffering from a shortages of antivirals and antibiotics. In Germany, hospital doctors are having to make difficult decisions about which children to assign to limited intensive care beds. In some cases, children with RSV or other serious conditions are getting transferred to hospitals elsewhere in Germany with spare capacity. “If the forecasts are right, then things will get significantly more acute in the coming days and week,” Sebastian Brenner, head of the paediatric intensive care unit at University Hospital Dresden, told German news channel n-tv. “We see this in France, for example, and in Switzerland. If that happens, then there will be bottlenecks when it comes to treatment.” Others warned that, in certain cases, doctors already were unable to provide the urgent care some children need. “The situation is so precarious that we genuinely have to say children are dying because we can’t treat them any more,” Dr. Michael Sasse, head of paediatric intensive care at Hanover’s MHH University hospital, said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 December 2022
  6. News Article
    A woman spent “four hours watching her mother dying on the floor waiting for an ambulance in a journey that should take just ten minutes”, the Irish Oireachtas Health Committee was told today. Committee deputy chairman Sean Crowe said the “woman died on her way to hospital”. Her bereaved daughter was left with the memory of her mother “gasping for breath”, he told Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. He said ambulance delays, compounded by them having to wait backed up for hours outside hospitals because of a lack of trolleys in emergency departments, were leading to serious consequences. In response the minister said: “The national ambulance service needs significant additional funding and that is happening now.” He said there is work under way to rebuild ambulance bases as well as add to the fleet, along with hiring more advanced paramedics. He added: “We need to recognise response times from ambulances are not where they need to be and vary around the country. It is not yet where it needs to be and some areas are worse than others.” Read full story Source: Independent Ireland, 30 November 2022
  7. News Article
    More than 200 people who died last week in England are estimated to have been affected by problems with urgent and emergency care, according to the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. Dr Adrian Boyle, who is also a consultant in emergency medicine, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a failure to address problems discharging patients to social care was a “massive own goal”. Ambulances had become “wards on wheels” while patients waited to get hospital treatment, Boyle said, adding that those most at risk “are the people that the ambulance can’t go to because it’s stuck outside the emergency department”. His comments came as the NHS launched 42 “winter war rooms” across England, designed to use data to respond to pressures on the health system. When asked about the project, Boyle said it was too early to tell if it was a good idea, adding: “You can paralyse yourself with analysis, it really is actually more simple and about building increased capacity.” He said the problem was best solved by focusing on hospital discharge and social care. “Fixing this starts at the back door of the hospital and being able to use our beds properly,” he said. “At the moment, there are 13,000 people waiting in hospitals, about 10% of the bed base, who are waiting to be discharged either to home, with a little bit more support, or to a care facility. And that’s just a massive own goal. We just need to reform the interface between acute hospitals and social care.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 December 2022
  8. News Article
    The NHS could be facing its largest maternity scandal to date as the review into services in Nottingham is now expected to exceed 1,500 cases, The Independent has learned. The probe began in 2021 after this newspaper revealed dozens of babies had died or been left with serious injuries or brain damage as a result of care at NUH, which runs Nottingham’s City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC). But the scope of the investigation has more than doubled, with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust sending more than 1,000 letters to families to contact the independent inquiry, after 700 families previously came forward with their concerns. Of these, the number of families expected to be covered by the probe is more than 1,500 – surpassing the 1,486 examined during the UK’s current largest maternity scandal in Shrewsbury. Read full story Source: The Independent, 30 November 2022
  9. News Article
    Five-year-old Yusuf Nazir died from pneumonia on Monday. It is reported an infection had spread to his lungs and caused multiple organ failure, resulting in several cardiac arrests. His family said they struggled to get the poorly child admitted to hospital in the run-up to his death, as they were told there were not enough beds or doctors available. His uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, said he had “begged” Rotherham General Hospital to take his nephew in. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain a GP said Yusuf had “severe tonsilitis” and needed intravenous antibiotics - but the doctor had been told not to refer anyone to the ward and they needed to go to A&E instead. Mr Ahmed said he rang the hospital himself. “I begged them. I begged them. I’ve never begged for anything in my life and I begged them to help him,” the tearful uncle said. He said he told them Yusuf needed treatment but was told there were no beds. He claimed he was told: “What do you want me to do? Just get a bed out of the air? We’ve got kids waiting.” They say they drove him to the emergency department of Rotherham General Hospital the next day when his condition did not improve. The family waited for hours before Yusuf was seen but he was sent home even though the doctor treating him had said “it was the worst case of tonsillitis he had ever seen”, according to Mr Ahmed. Yusuf’s condition worsened while he was at home and his parents called an ambulance and insisted he was taken to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where he later died. Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust has launched an investigation into Yusuf’s care. Read full story Source: The Independent. 29 November 2022
  10. News Article
    Staff mistakes in a private laboratory may have caused 23 extra deaths from Covid-19. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) made the claim in a report into errors at the Immensa lab in Wolverhampton. It said as many as 39,000 positive results were wrongly reported as negative in September and October 2021. The mistakes led to "increased numbers of [hospital] admissions and deaths", the report, published on Tuesday, concluded. Thousands of people, many in the South West, were wrongly told to stop testing after their results were processed by Immensa. The Wolverhampton laboratory was used for additional testing capacity for NHS Test and Trace from early September 2021, but testing was suspended on 12 October following reports of inaccurate results. Experts said high case rates in some areas were down to people unwittingly infecting others when they should have been isolating. UKHSA experts said the mistakes could have led to as many as 55,000 additional infections in areas where the false negatives were reported. "Each incorrect negative test likely led to just over two additional infections," the report said. "In those same geographical areas, our results also suggest an increased number of admissions and deaths." Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 November 2022
  11. News Article
    A review of the clinical records of 44 patients who died under the care of former neurologist Michael Watt has found "significant failures in their treatment" and "poor communication with families". While this review looked at a sample of cases in which people died, potentially thousands more could be affected. The review arises from a 2018 recall of 2,500 outpatients who were in Dr Watt's care at the Belfast Health Trust. About one in five patients had to have their diagnoses changed. This separate review into 44 deaths was conducted by the Royal College of Physicians at the request of the regulator, the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA). It highlighted concerns over clinical decision-making, prescribing and diagnostics. It reveals a misdiagnosis rate of 45% among this group of patients, twice that for living patients. Speaking to BBC News NI, the RQIA's chair, Christine Collins, said the outcome of the review was "shocking and gut-wrenching as so many had experienced unpleasant deaths which they ought not to have done". Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 November 2022
  12. News Article
    Poorer women in Britain have some of the highest death rates from cancer in Europe, an in-depth new World Health Organization study has found. They are much more likely to die from the disease compared with better-off women in the UK and women in poverty in many other European countries. Women in the UK from deprived backgrounds are particularly at risk of dying from cancer of the lungs, liver, bladder and oesophagus (foodpipe), according to the research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the WHO’s specialist cancer body. IARC experts led by Dr Salvatore Vaccarella analysed data from 17 European countries, looking for socioeconomic inequalities in mortality rates for 17 different types of cancer between 1990 and 2015. Out of the 17 countries studied, Britain had the sixth-worst record for the number of poor women dying of cancer. It had the worst record for oesophageal cancer, fourth worst for lung and liver cancer and seventh worst for breast and kidney cancer. However, the UK has a better record on poor men dying of cancer compared with their counterparts in many of the other 16 countries. It ranked fifth overall, second for cancer of the larynx and pharynx, and third for lung, stomach and colon cancer. That stark gender divide is most likely because women in the UK began smoking in large numbers some years after men did so, the researchers believe. They pointed to the fact that while cases of lung cancer have fallen among men overall in Britain, they have remained stable or increased among women, and gone up among women from deprived backgrounds. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 November 2022
  13. News Article
    A report commissioned by Jeremy Hunt before he became Chancellor has highlighted how the pandemic ’stopped progress on patient safety in its tracks’ and called for more accurate data to be published on a range of measures. The National State of Patient Safety was funded by Mr Hunt’s Patient Safety Watch charity and produced by Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. It highlights a rise in rates of MRSA and C. difficile since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, as well as an increase in deaths due to venous thromboembolism and hip fractures. The report said the pandemic had also exacerbated issues associated with staff wellbeing, claiming there had been “notable rises” in staff burnout and ill-health. The researchers described problems with the breadth and accuracy of available patient safety data and highlighted that only 44% of trusts currently fulfilled the obligation to report their own estimated number of avoidable deaths. Although the report added that “data on rates of avoidable deaths are not a panacea”, it described them as a “snapshot of safety and harm and are most usefully used to initiate further work to understand the causes of unwarranted variation”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 November 2022
  14. News Article
    Bosses at Nottingham's crisis-hit maternity units are set to miss a deadline for clearing a backlog of incomplete "serious incident" investigations. Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) has 53 outstanding maternity incidents yet to be investigated. The trust had said it aimed to complete investigations by December 23. But director of midwifery Sharon Wallis says they have not progressed as quickly as she had hoped. The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the trust has managed to clear a number of those incidents - but it declared another nine in September and October. An independent review team, led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden, is examining dozens of baby deaths at the trust. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 November 2022
  15. News Article
    The NHS in England is facing a “perfect winter storm” with 10 times more people in hospital with flu than this time last year, and ambulances experiencing deadly delays when arriving at A&E with sick patients. There were an average of 344 patients a day in hospitals in England with flu last week, more than 10 times the number at the beginning of last December. And as many as 3 in 10 patients arriving at hospitals by ambulance are waiting at least 30 minutes to be handed over to A&E teams. Health chiefs say the crisis is leading to deaths. The figures on flu and ambulance delays were published by NHS England on Thursday and offered the first weekly snapshot of how hospitals are performing this season. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the healthcare system in England, said: “These figures really hammer home just how stretched services already are as we head into a perfect winter storm. Significantly higher numbers of people are in hospital because of flu compared to this time last year, coupled with the fact that Covid-19 has not gone away.” He added: “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays, and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 November 2022
  16. News Article
    A carer who murdered the elderly woman he was employed to look after had a history of violent crime including actual bodily harm, a report found. A safeguarding adults review over the death of a 77-year-old Devon woman in 2021 criticised working practices among organisations involved in her care. Devon and Cornwall Police did not disclose information about domestic abuse callouts involving the killer in a DBS check by the care provider. He was jailed for life in July 2022. The woman had seen her killer as "a grandson" figure, it said. The 35-year-old killer attacked his victim after she discovered he had stolen several thousand pounds from her. The had no previous employment experience of care before being taken on as her sole carer by Complete Quality Care Ltd, an independent care provider. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 November 2022
  17. News Article
    Hospital doctors failed to share with child protection services a list of "significant" injuries a five-year-old boy suffered 11 months before he was murdered, a case review has found. Logan Mwangi had a broken arm and multiple bruises across his body when he was taken to A&E in August 2020. But a paediatric consultant said these injuries were accidental and did not make a child protection referral. Logan, from Bridgend, was murdered by his mother, stepfather and a teenager. A Child Practice Review (CPR) has looked at how different agencies were involved with Logan's family in the 17 months before his death. Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board said it welcomed the commissioning of an independent review into how it identifies and investigates non-accidental injuries. The report said that if the injuries had been shared with social services, appropriate action could have been taken to safeguard Logan. Jan Pickles, the independent chair of the review panel, said it was a "a significant missed opportunity". She added: "Had further information from health been shared it most likely, though we cannot say for sure because of hindsight bias, would have triggered a child protection assessment in line with the joint agreed guidelines, as the nature of those injuries clearly met the threshold." Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 November 2022
  18. News Article
    Ambulance crews could not respond to almost one in four 999 calls last month – the most ever – because so many were tied up outside A&Es waiting to hand patients over, dramatic new NHS figures show. An estimated 5,000 patients in England – also the highest number on record – potentially suffered “severe harm” through waiting so long either to be admitted to A&E or just to get an ambulance to turn up to help them. Ambulance officers warned that patients were dying every day directly because of the delays since the service could no longer perform its role as a “safety net” for people needing urgent medical help. “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis,” said Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), which represents the heads of England’s 10 regional NHS ambulance services. Flaherty added: “Our national data for hospital handover delays during October 2022 is extremely worrying and underlines the fact that in some parts of the country efforts to reduce or eradicate these devastating and unnecessary delays are simply not working.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 November 2022
  19. News Article
    A maternity unit criticised for the preventable stillbirth of a baby is under investigation after the unexpected death of a second baby. The newborn baby died in December last year after her birth at the standalone midwifery-led unit (MLU) at Lagan Valley Hospital in Lisburn. Despite this, the unit continued to operate as normal for another three months when the South Eastern Trust temporarily paused births at the MLU. The second tragedy came four years after Jaxon McVey was stillborn when his delivery at the unit went catastrophically wrong. A post-mortem found he died as a result of shoulder dystocia – an obstetric emergency where the head is born but the shoulder becomes trapped behind the pubic bone. Jaxon’s mum, Christine McCleery, has hit out at the South Eastern Trust and raised concerns over the measures put in place following his stillbirth on Mother’s Day 2017. “I feel like they didn’t learn from Jaxon,” she said. “I don’t know if any other babies died before Jaxon, but I know one died afterwards. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Independent, 23 November 2022
  20. News Article
    A coroner has written to the health secretary warning a lack of guidance around a bacteria that could contaminate new hospitals' water supply may lead to future deaths. It follows inquests into the deaths of Anne Martinez, 65, and Karen Starling, 54, who died a year after undergoing double lung transplants at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge in 2019. Both were exposed to Mycobacterium abscessus, likely to have come from the site's water supply. The coroner said there was evidence the risks of similar contamination was "especially acute for new hospitals". In a prevention of future deaths report, external, Keith Morton KC, assistant coroner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said 34 people had contracted the bacteria at the hospital since it opened at its new site in 2019. He said the bacteria "poses a risk of death to those who are immuno-suppressed" and there was a "lack of understanding" about how it entered the water system. There was "no guidance on the identification and control" of mycobacterium abscesses, the coroner said. Mr Morton said documentation on safe water in hospitals needed "urgent review and amendment". "Consideration needs to be given to whether special or additional measures are required in respect of the design, installation, commissioning and operation of hospital water systems in new hospitals," he said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 November 2022
  21. News Article
    When David Morganti’s case notes landed on Andrew Cox’s desk this autumn they told a devastating story — but one which was depressingly familiar to the senior coroner for Cornwall. The 87-year-old RAF veteran had fallen and hit his head in the bathroom of the house he shared with his wife, Valerie, in April. It took nine hours for paramedics to reach their home near St Austell, Cornwall. As they waited, the bleeding on his brain became gradually worse until he lost consciousness. By the time he reached hospital it was too late. An expert neurosurgeon told Cox that had he reached hospital faster, Morganti might have survived. The coroner said the effects of the injuries he suffered were likely to have been exacerbated “by a delay in the arrival of an ambulance and his subsequent admission into hospital.” It was the latest in a series of similar deaths the coroner had encountered. After Morganti’s inquest, Cox resolved to carry out a wider investigation into what appeared to be a broken system. He has now sent his findings to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, and demanded he act to prevent more deaths. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 19 November 2022
  22. News Article
    Nearly a fifth of trusts providing maternity care have been red rated for their infant mortality rates in a national audit. Twenty-three trusts were flagged for their perinatal mortality in the latest Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audit and Confidential Enquiries audit for maternity services. Trusts with mortality rates more than 5% higher than an average of peer group providers are given a red rating. The report was published last month and looked at data for 2020. Average perinatal mortality rates have been falling across England since 2013, although there is significant variation across England. Six trusts in the latest audit were red rated for both stillbirths and neonatal mortality; Buckinghamshire Healthcare; Gloucestershire Hospitals; University Hospitals Dorset; Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals; University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire; and University Hospitals of Leicester. Twenty-three trusts rated red on a combined perinatal mortality indicator (including the six listed above). For 17 of them, their mortality rates were not high enough on one of the stillbirth or neonatal measures to be red rated, but sufficiently high enough on both indicators to tip their overall extended overall perinatal rating into the red. Andrew Furlong, medical director of University Hospitals Leicester, said: “Where learnings have been identified from reviews of care, we have developed robust action plans and strengthened care practice to shape and improve future services.” These include aiming to improve access to interpreters, provide clearer medical review guidelines, and update ultrasound scanning processes, he added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 November 2022
  23. News Article
    Greg Price died of complications after testicular cancer surgery, but a review of his case found missed faxes, follow-ups and botched data-sharing ultimately cost the vibrant 31-year-old Alberta man his life. All the missteps in his case meant it took 407 days from his first complaint for Price — an engineer, pilot, and athlete — to be diagnosed with cancer. He died three months after his doctor said he should see a specialist, and while he was being passed between multiple doctors, his health data often was not. Now, his sister, Teri Price, says too little has changed in medical information-sharing in the decade since her brother's death. This, despite a review of his case — the 2013 Alberta Continuity of Patient Care Study — that recommended life-saving changes to the healthcare system to avoid more experiences like his. So, she's fighting to improve the system that she says not only failed her brother, but keeps failing to change. Price says that Canadians assume that their health information is shared between doctors to keep them safe and studied to improve the system, but often, it's not. And medical front-line staff in Canada say problems persist when it comes to sharing everything from patient information to aggregate medical and staffing data. "Information tends to be broken up between the services that patients attend," said Ewan Affleck, a doctor in the Northwest Territories who has spent his career fighting for better data access, and a member of the expert advisory arm of the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Group. "The cohesion and use of health data in Canada is legislated to fail." Read full story Source: CBC News, 17 November 2022
  24. News Article
    Women are four times as likely to die after childbirth in Britain as in Scandinavian countries, a study published in the BMJ has found. Researchers analysed data on the number of women who die because of complications during pregnancy in eight high-income European countries. They found that Britain had the second-highest death rate, with one in 10,000 mothers dying within six weeks of giving birth, only slightly less than in Slovakia, the worst performing. The study found that rates of “late” maternal death — when women die between six weeks and a year after giving birth — were nearly twice as high in Britain as in France, the only other country for which data was available. Heart problems and suicide were the main causes of death. Professor Andrew Shennan, an obstetrician at King’s College London, said: “Any death relating to pregnancy is devastating. Equally shocking are the avoidable discrepancies in worldwide maternal mortality. “Causes of [maternal] death are relatively consistent across the world, and largely avoidable. Most deaths are due to haemorrhage, sepsis and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. “In Europe, non-obstetric causes of death have become proportionately more common than obstetric causes, including deaths from cardiovascular disease (23%) and suicide (13%); these should be prioritised.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times. 17 November 2022
  25. News Article
    Experts have warned that Europe faces a “cancer epidemic” unless urgent action is taken to boost treatment and research, after an estimated 1m diagnoses were missed during the pandemic. The impact of Covid-19 and the focus on it has exposed “weaknesses” in cancer health systems and in the cancer research landscape across the continent, which, if not addressed as a matter of urgency, will set back cancer outcomes by almost a decade, leading healthcare and scientific experts say. A report, European Groundshot – Addressing Europe’s Cancer Research Challenges: a Lancet Oncology Commission, brought together a wide range of patient, scientific, and healthcare experts with detailed knowledge of cancer across Europe. One unintended consequence of the pandemic was the adverse effects that the rapid repurposing of health services and national lockdowns, and their continuing legacy, have had on cancer services, on cancer research, and on patients with cancer, the experts said. “To emphasise the scale of this problem, we estimate that about 1m cancer diagnoses might have been missed across Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic,” they wrote in The Lancet Oncology. “There is emerging evidence that a higher proportion of patients are diagnosed with later cancer stages compared with pre-pandemic rates as a result of substantial delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment. This cancer stage shift will continue to stress European cancer systems for years to come. “These issues will ultimately compromise survival and contribute to inferior quality of life for many European patients with cancer.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 November 2022
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