People with a diagnosis of rectal, bladder, breast, ovarian or cervical cancer who underwent surgery last year at the Cabueñes University Hospital waited, on average, between one and nineteen days less than they did. patients who entered the operating room in 2019. Waiting times improved in all these cases despite the limitations brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. There was only one exception: colon neoplasia. On average, patients with this type of cancer had to wait 66 days to be operated on. But it is that, an average, because the cases of more aggressive tumors had priority and, therefore, they were treated earlier while the not so urgent ones were delayed for more than those two months on average.
A time higher than the records of the previous two years, when the average wait had been located at 52 days (in 2019) and 44 (in 2018).
What does he answer that the delay times for colon cancer interventions are not in line with those of the rest of oncological processes -which remained at the same figures as the previous year or even improved them- is something that the Hospital de Cabueñes has yet to be determined.
It also so happens that in 2020 there were fewer patients with colon cancer operated on: 46 fewer than the previous year. The figures speak for themselves: in 2018 there were 105 and 118 in 2019. Last year, just 72. That raises concerns that “there may be patients with undiagnosed pathology”, but that “they will end up appearing in the coming months,” he points out. the deputy medical director of Cabueñes, José Manuel Pello, who has carried out a detailed report on the impact of the pandemic on the surgical activity of the Gijon hospital throughout 2020.
According to these data, in the cases of tumors typical of women, such as those of the breast, ovary and cervix, with activity figures quite similar to those of previous years, it was possible to reduce the average waiting times until entering the operating room. It was one month for breast cancer (three days less than in 2019), nineteen days (less than three weeks) for ovarian cancer, and twenty days for cervical cancer.
However, it was in rectal cancer cases where the best results were achieved, with an average of eighteen days of waiting than the previous year. Patients with this pathology who underwent surgery last year waited, on average, 64 days compared to 82 days the previous year. In bladder cancer processes, it was lowered to 53 days: three less than in 2019 and nine less than in 2018.
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