Concerning new figures indicate that cancer treatment could be killing up to 50 per cent of cancer patients in some British hospitals. Because of this, there are now calls for cancer suffers to be warned of the dangers of chemotherapy before beginning the treatment.
A new study, carried out by Public Health England and Cancer Research UK, has looked into the number of cancer patients who died within a month of being admitted to hospital and starting chemotherapy. These numbers might indicate that patients died from the chemotherapy treatment rather than the cancer.
“This is the first time that 30-day mortality following chemotherapy has been investigated on a national level,” said lead clinical author of the study Professor David Dodwell. “Age, general wellbeing, and whether patients are treated with palliative or curative intent are all factors that affect the risk of early mortality of breast and lung cancer patients.”
The results showed that, on average, 8.4 per cent of lung cancer patients and 2.4 per cent of breast cancer patients died within a month of commencing chemotherapy. Some hospitals were considerably higher than the national average. At Lancashire Teaching Hospital, 28 per cent of lung cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy died within the first month of treatment. While this mortality rate rose to an alarming 50 per cent at a hospital in Milton Keynes, it was based on a small number of patients.
Lung cancer deaths during the first four weeks of treatment were also much higher in Coventry, Derby, South Tyneside, Blackpool, Surrey and Sussex than the national average, according to the study. Public Health England has announced that these hospitals are now under review. The hospitals themselves have looked into all of these cancer cases and are confident that the chemotherapy prescribed was safe.
Doctors still assert that chemotherapy is the most effective form of treatment for fighting cancer. Dr. Jem Rashbass, Cancer Lead for PHE, said: “Chemotherapy is a vital part of cancer treatment and is a large reason behind the improved survival rates over last four decades.”
“However, it is powerful medication with significant side effects and often getting the balance right on which patients to treat aggressively can be hard,” she continued. Chemotherapy is a toxic treatment because while it targets cancer cells, it also targets healthy cells, which may be the reason why people are dying from the treatment.
The PHE study looked at 23,000 women with breast cancer and almost 10,000 people with lung cancer who underwent chemotherapy in 2014. It found that a total of 1,383 of these patients died within 30 days. The researchers also noticed that there were significant differences in survival rates depending on age and the overall health of a person. It’s important that doctors are very careful when selecting patients for treatment.
“I think it’s important to make patients aware that there are potentially life threatening downsides to chemotherapy,” advised Professor Dodwell. “And doctors should be more careful about who they treat with chemotherapy.” However, many experts admit that it is a difficult decision deciding whether a patient is strong enough for cancer therapy.
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“If we give less chemo, then some patients will die because they didn’t get chemo. It’s a fine balance and the more data we have, the better we can be at making sure we get the balance right,” said Professor David Cameron, Edinburgh Cancer Centre, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland,
“The concern is that some of the patients dying within 30 days of being given chemo probably shouldn’t have been given the chemo. But, how many? There is no easy way to answer that, but perhaps looking at those places/hospitals where the death rate was higher might help,” he continued.
The bottom line is that hospitals where the death rates are higher due to chemotherapy need to be investigated; patients need to have a good understanding of the effects of chemotherapy; and doctors need to be able to better identify whether a patient is fit enough for treatment.
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