The Portuguese League Against Cancer has expressed concerns over the reduction in the number of hospitals performing breast cancer surgeries, calling for additional measures to ensure response capacity and avoid delays in treatment. “Treatment has to be done in the shortest possible time and, therefore, in order to have these kinds of measures, there have to be additional measures to ensure that there is installed capacity, multidisciplinary capacity, resource capacity to treat these cases as they should be treated,” Vítor Rodrigues, of the League, told Lusa. The decision to stop breast cancer surgeries in seven ‘health units’ (including hospitals) has been announced by the Executive Directorate of the country’s SNS health service, and is due to take effect from April 1. Describing the announcement as “rather dry”, Vítor Rodrigues is worried that the change will “create problems, introduce entropy into the system, which are delays, because if there are delays, quality loses its effectiveness”.
Concerns over breast cancer surgery restrictions
