Busiest year for closing Cork cancer unit

A BREAST cancer unit destined for closure under Government plans to centralise treatment services has recorded its busiest year ever.

Under the National Cancer Control Programme, the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital (SIVUH) is set to lose its symptomatic breast cancer service to Cork University Hospital (CUH) — even though SIVUH is treating more patients. Figures released yesterday show during 2008, 412 newly diagnosed primary breast cancers were treated at SIVUH, of which 290 were diagnosed at the hospital’s breast care unit. SIVUH said it diagnosed 210 breast cancers in 2007, compared with 141 at CUH.

In addition, all 122 cancers diagnosed in the neighbouring BreastCheck building were referred to SIVUH.

Consultant surgeon Denis Richardson, a member of the medical staff at SIVUH, said he believed most doctors did not regard plans to transfer breast care services to CUH as “the right decision”.

“It is a political decision, not a medical one. If there is any discipline in medicine that you would actually want to move out of tertiary care, it would probably be breast cancer. It does not need the back-up of intensive care or dialysis or any of the hi-tech stuff you associate with tertiary care,” Mr Richardson said. In addition, transferring the service to CUH will make it more expensive, Mr Richardson said, because bed costs are higher in a tertiary care centre.

The decision to move symptomatic breast care to CUH has been questioned on a number of grounds including:

*Why, when SIVUH is a breast care centre of excellence, is it losing the service to a hospital recently rated “unsatisfactory, requiring urgent attention” under a new Health Service Executive (HSE) performance measurement system?

*Will a new BreastCheck unit, opened adjacent to SIVUH in December 2007, and built at a cost of e5 million, also have to relocate when the service transfers?

*Why move a service that has the trust and confidence of the women who use it, built up over more than 20 years?

Health Minister Mary Harney has said that the relocation of the service to CUH will create a critical mass of specialists of all oncology disciplines on a single geographic site.

The SIVUH unit is the second-biggest unit in the country and the largest outside of Dublin. A statement released by its chief executive Ger O’Callaghan this week said it was “possibly the busiest unit in the country”. There has been a 100% increase in activity at the unit since 2007.