Dr. Gerald Batist's stark prediction stems from hospitals having to cut back on clinical services earlier in the pandemic.
One of Quebec’s leading cancer researchers and oncologists is warning that the mortality rate for cancer will rise in the province by as much as 25 per cent in the coming years as a result of hospitals having to cut back on medical imaging and other clinical services earlier in the pandemic.
“We’re seeing younger people with more advanced disease,” Dr. Gerald Batist, director of the Segal Cancer Centre at the Jewish General Hospital, told the Montreal Gazette.
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“We’re seeing older people with more advanced disease,” he added. “Across the board, from surgeons to gastroenterologists to hematologists, we’re seeing all kinds of malignancies, lymphomas, leukemias, breast tumours — all of them more advanced than we’re used to seeing for many years. And this is a worldwide phenomenon.”
Batist estimated a 10 to 25 per cent increase in Quebec’s cancer mortality rate. “We’re already seeing that,” he added. “We just don’t have the numbers yet.”
Batist’s stark forecast comes after a study by McGill University researchers that was published in the International Journal of Cancer in April predicted that “cancer care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to 21,247 (two per cent) more cancer deaths in Canada in 2020 to 2030, assuming treatment capacity is recovered to 2019 pre-pandemic levels in 2021.”
That study was completed last November, before the latest series of délestage (the French term for cutting back on clinical services) that occurred last winter to cope with the Omicron-driven wave in the pandemic. Thus, the cumulative impact of délestage on cancer care has grown worse since that study was published.
“All the models predicted that in order to mitigate this, we would have to increase capacity (for cancer care) by 20 to 30 per cent, which is impossible,” Batist explained. “So we’re struggling.”
Even if there are no more rounds of délestage — which is not a given, as the pandemic is still not over — the province lacks enough medical personnel to confront the cancer-care backlog.
“At our hospital, I don’t think we have a problem with surgical wait times (for cancer),” Batist noted. “We have other problems. We have problems with radiology wait times because of a shortage of technicians. It’s a human resource problem. In some hospitals, it’s nurses or anesthesiologists or OR technicians. It’s a worldwide human resource problem.
“The truth is we’re competing with every major city in the world, and so (Premier François) Legault has to show why Quebec would be a better draw than Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, New York, L.A. — anywhere in the world, because this is a worldwide shortage of nurses.”
The McGill study projected a total of 2,782 excess cancer deaths for Quebec by 2030, but again, that was before last winter’s délestage. Ontario would be the hardest hit, with a projection of 8,794 excess cancer deaths.
Robert Maranda, a Health Ministry spokesperson, acknowledged the shortage of personnel to tackle the cancer tsunami.
“Note that several (cancer) centres struggling with access issues were among the sites in difficulty before the pandemic,” Maranda said, adding the government is following the issue closely.
According to a report by the Canadian Cancer Society, about 84,600 Canadians were expected to die from cancer in 2021. Lung cancer was the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women last year. The second and third leading causes of cancer deaths for men were colorectal and prostate, respectively. For women, they were breast and then colorectal.
The report found that cancer mortality rates were lower in the western provinces and Ontario, and higher in Quebec and the eastern provinces. In fact, Quebec’s cancer mortality rate — at 200.9 deaths per 100,000 population — was the third-highest in the country, after Newfoundland (219.9 per 100,000 population) and Nova Scotia (219.8 per 100,000 population).
aderfel@postmedia.com
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