Frank Frizelle: Professor and Bowel Cancer New Zealand Medical advisor on what the impact of decreased bowel screening procedures will be

Palmerston North Hospital is cutting back on some of its bowel cancer screening procedures, and Health New Zealand is unable to say if this is happening in other regions around the country. 

852 patients who are at a high risk of developing cancer are on the waiting list for a colonoscopy in Palmerston North.

Professor and Medical advisor at Bowel Cancer New Zealand Frank Frizelle said this will result in people having cancer who otherwise would not. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Palmerston North Hospital is cutting back on some of its
bowl cancer screening procedures, and Health New Zealand is unable
to say if this is happening in other regions around
New Zealand. At the moment, in Palmerston North there are
eight hundred and fifty two patients who are on the
waiting list for a surveillance colonoscopy. These are patients with
a high risk of developing bow cancer because of their

(00:21):
medical history or a family history. Well, the hospital says
pretty much all of those patients probably won't be getting
a colonoscopy until May at the earliest. The hospital says
it doesn't have the capacity to screen them and it
has to focus on people who are either symptomatic or
are already on the National bow cancer screening list. The

(00:41):
Professor Frank Frazell is medical advisor at Bellcanser, New Zealand.
He's with me now, good evening, good ANNTE. Is this
How concerned are you to hear this?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I think, well, I am, I'm very concerned. These are
patients said increase risk of bow cancer. They've either had
a previous poop or they've got a BAM. The history
that's very strong for bow cancer, So they've been identified
as not being your average risk, but they have been
substantially increase in risk. And now the delays of six

(01:17):
months before they can pick up and carry on, so
that six months of those screening, which means they weren't
clear the more at the start, So many of these
people will wait a lot longer in order to get
service delivered to them that they have been expecting.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Is six months as a minimum, a significant period of
time when it comes to the development of bow cancer.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Would you like to wait six months to find out
that you had bow cancer?

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Certainly not, and I think that's.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
It's also most importantly the ability to remove pre malignant lesions,
pre cancer's lesions, which stops them going on to cancer.
And so just that delay of nine months, maybe a
year for some of these people will increase the number
of these people with which could have avoided the cancer
by having premial legions removed.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Will this result in people having cancer that otherwise would
have been detected? Do you think?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yes? They would have had pre cancerous legions removed, And
now that we're delayed and they won't get it, they
won't get them removed until too late. Until they've got cancer.
So the whole that's the whole purpose of screening and
of the process, and it's a lot of work has
gone to determining that these people are at increased risk

(02:37):
and they've proven both by family history and by having
previous for previous cancers that they are at risk and
so they are a vulnerable group. And my understanding is
that the short staffed and Palmston North or Mid Central
Health is the sort of old region used to be
called and the unable to replace staff that have left,

(03:02):
and that's partly due to the infrastructure around appointment with
the Federal Aura House New Zealand is it's also called.
And this has been an issue for at least eighteen
months two years, trying to get people through the appointment
process and the lack of.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Appointment and now it's kind of it's come to a
head and here we are with a six month pause. Professor,
thank you for filling us in on that. Professor Frank
Fazel's balcans in New Zealand's Medical Advisor. For more from
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