Cancer patients face scan delays due to lab closures, lack of funds and shortages

Patients are at risk as thousands of radiology scans are being held up by a shortage of chemicals used to track conditions such as prostate and bone cancers due to a slowdown of imports, lack of funds and closure of critical labs.

- REBECCA THOMAS

Hospital trusts across the country in areas including Oxford, Bath and London all issued alerts this year over shortages of radioactive material, which led to scans being delayed or cancelled.

In one instance, hundreds of urgent radiology cancer scans were delayed when two major UK laboratories – one in Wales and one on the south coast of England – closed for three months. A combination of these closures due to lack of staff and funding, as well as faltering imports from the EU, has led to a “perfect storm” of supply shortages, health chiefs have warned.

Jilly Croasdale, president of the British Nuclear Medicine Society (BNMS), and Dr Katharine Halliday, president of the Royal College of Radiologists, both raised concerns.

Radioactive chemicals are commonly used to detect diseases such as prostate and bone cancer and to check to see if they have spread. NHS data shows more than 317,000 of these types of nuclear medicine tests were carried out by the NHS in 2023-24.

The average time between a request and a test being carried out hit 25 days in June this year, a slight dip from January last year – when waits hit 28 days. Before 2023, the average time for a test did not exceed 22 days.

But in some hospitals this year, such as The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, University Hospital Southampton and Harrogate District Hospital, the average time taken to test a patient exceeded 50 days. One trust, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, hit 108 days.

Ms Croasdale, who is also head of radiopharmacy and associate director of healthcare science for Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, said the delays meant people were left waiting weeks to find out if their cancer had spread.

Speaking to The Independent, she blamed a recent shortage on the closure of two of the biggest labs working on these materials for up to three months.