Scots face longest waits for cancer treatment in UK at 65 days from diagnosis to chemo

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Cancer patients in Scotland receive less cancer care than in other comparable countries, a new study has shown.Cancer Research UK has urged the Scottish Government to deliver on promises made in a recent strategy to tackle the disease following the study published in the Lancet Oncology.Researchers from University College London - part of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) - studied data of more than 780,000 people between 2012 and 2017 in Australia, Canada, Norway and the UK, looking at the proportion of patients treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy and the waiting times they face.In Scotland, 29.3% of patients were were treated with chemotherapy - higher than only Northern Ireland where 28.8% were recorded - and 19.9% were treated with radiotherapy, the same as Northern Ireland but 0.2% higher than in England.The UK figures were lower than the other countries studied, with 39.1% of Norwegian cancer patients being treated with chemotherapy and 22.5% with radiotherapy.In the included Canadian provinces, 38.5% were treated with chemotherapy and 25.7% with radiotherapy and the two Australian states included - New South Wales and Victoria - boasted 42.1% and 23.9% respectively.Scotland also showed the worst waiting times for chemotherapy in the UK with patients waiting on average 65 days, compared to 58 in Wales, 57 in Northern Ireland and 48 days in England. Join the Daily Record's WhatsApp community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. Waiting times for chemotherapy in Scotland were higher than all but one of the surveyed regions in other countries, with those in the Saskatchewan province of Canada waiting on average 74 days, while nearby Manitoba was also on 65