Cancer patients’ scans will be cancelled over ‘severe’ supply shortages of vital chemical, minister warns

Cancer scans will be delayed and cancelled due to a “severe” shortage of a chemical which has left hospitals with “no supply at all”, a government minister has warned.

The Department of Health and Social Care issued a critical alert on Friday over the “severe shortage” of a radioactive chemical needed for the diagnosis of thousands of cancers, including prostate and breast cancer.

The fresh alert comes after The Independent revealed warnings from doctors and specialists in August that cancer care had been hit by a “perfect” storm in shortages of radioisotopes. Experts at the British Nuclear Medicine Society told The Independent at the time hundreds of cancer scans were being cancelled due to worsening shortages.

Now minister Karin Smyth has admitted the fresh shortage will lead to delays in access to care and cancellations as officials have been unable to mitigate the impact of the shortages.

The shortage comes after pharmaceutical supplier, Curium, was forced to stop production of a nuclear product that is needed to create Technetium-99m, a radioactive chemcial used in diagnostic imaging.

As a result of the shortage, clinicians are having to prioritise patients needing the most urgent scans, while hospitals have been called on to aid one another.

The shortage is expected to last for at least four weeks.

In a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, Karin Smyth, minister for secondary care at the Department for Health and Social Care, said: “The affected radioisotopes are mainly used for diagnosing cancers, including prostate and breast cancer. It is also used for imaging of organ function in scans, including for the heart. Despite efforts by my Department and NHS England to limit the negative impacts of this shortage, there will be delays to patient access to services relying on the impacted radioisotopes, including cancellations.”

The minister said the UK’s shortage has been caused by “a sudden global disruption of manufacturing capacity, with a number of the nuclear reactors used to produce these elements being out of service.”

Her statement added: “There will remain a significantly constrained supply of these radioisotopes to the UK from the remaining reactors. Radioisotopes give off radiation and undergo a process of decay, which means they cannot be stored or kept in reserve. Our priority is to minimise the impact on patients as much as possible.”

“I know how difficult this will be for affected patients while we face this supply issue. This issue is different in nature to normal supply chain problems due to the unique challenges radioisotope shortages present.”