Open for business

It is great to hear about the plans to kick start cancer screening. There have been a number of urgent cancer surgical lists.

It is difficult not to feel for some of the COVID patients – the stories have been especially desperate. There have been family members who act as carers for sick relatives, NHS colleagues, and husbands and wives both on ventilators.

However, the statistics for COVID patients in intensive care are especially grim – see my previous despatch explaining how 49% of patients in the UK survive to discharge from intensive care according to ICNARC data. This compares to invasive breast cancer where over 80% of patients survive for 5 years, or coronary artery bypass surgery where 5 year survival can be as high as 90%. Even organ transplants have a higher survival rate.

It is a little crazy that we have effectively stopped treatment of other life-threatening diseases in favour of COVID. It is probably a bit unrealistic to expect hospitals to stop treating COVID patients, but perhaps we could think of a more nuanced approach to this. One idea that certainly was considered in the early days, but seems to have been discounted, was having ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ hospitals. All COVID cases would be evacuated from specific tertiary care facilities so that they could continue business as usual for cancer chemotherapy, heart surgery and other diseases.

This idea may have to wait for wave two and three if they ever eventuate. It could even have utility for future non-COVID driven consolidation of specialist services. Barely a day is going by when I do not hear about another COVID ward being transformed back into a ‘normal’ surgical or medical ward. Every day is starting to feel like spring has arrived with a creeping sense of normality returning. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It doesn’t look like a train coming towards us.