A CANCER treatment expert has estimated that more than 2,000 Irish people newly diagnosed with the disease each year may not be receiving the necessary kind of treatment.
Dr John Armstrong, medical director of St Luke's Hospital, Dublin, said that up to 10 per cent of patients who should be receiving radiotherapy treatment were not.
It was now estimated, according to international figures, he said, that 50 per cent of all new cancer patients required radiotherapy at some stage during their illness.
"But we are talking probably about 40 per cent or less of new cancer patients in Ireland at present actually getting radiotherapy, so there is a 10 per cent deficit," he said.
There was a number of options in the treatment of cancer, and the figure does not mean that other treatments are "necessarily wrong but that the service is being underutilised".
"We are only touching the surface of what radiation oncology can do at the moment. Part of the underutilisation of radiotherapy may be that the medical profession is not as familiar with the potential benefits of it. But that situation is changing," he said.
Dr Armstrong stressed that there was no evidence of "systematic denial" of radiotherapy to patients. "No one is being refused."
St Luke's Hospital, which treats more cancer patients than any other hospital in the State, sees more than 4,000 such patients a year.
He predicted that demand for this type of treatment will increase. It involves the use of powerful X rays focused on the cancer, avoiding the normal tissue, using hitech equipment.
The director of the National Cancer Registry, Dr Harry Comber, said yesterday its figures showed that just 20 per cent of cancer patients were being treated with radiotherapy. However, this figure was an underestimate since the registry received information only about initial treatment, and such treatment given at a later time would not be recorded.
He said it was difficult using international figures to work out accurate figures for a particular country. "Bare statistics don't mean much. There are too many variables and it is difficult to make direct comparisons of treatment regimes," Dr Comber said.
Dr Armstrong said the State was also "significantly below par" internationally in terms of the number of radiation oncologists working in hospitals.
It has been over a decade since a new consultant post in the speciality was created in Dublin, he said.
"Based on our increasing case load and international figures, more radiation oncologists are needed. The introduction of new high tech facilities, which benefits patient care enormously, has created an added burden on radiation oncologists," he said.
However, there was no specific mention of the need to create additional posts in this area in the National Cancer Strategy, published late last year, he told Irish Medical News.