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Lyon (AFP)
“The hardest part is not being able to project yourself anymore.” Cancer patients deprived of overnight surgery due to the Covid-19 epidemic testify to their dismay at medical arbitration.
Jean-Pierre, 81, learned in July that he has cancer of the cardia, the junction between the esophagus and the stomach. Her treatment protocol included four cycles of chemotherapy before the tumor was removed at the end of October in a hospital in Savoy: “my luck is that she has not yet migrated, I have no metastases,” the octogenarian told AFP.
“Two days earlier, I was called to tell me that there was no more resuscitation bed available for my operation, which means that if anything ever went wrong, I would stay on the pool table … you might as well play Russian roulette “.
“What saddens me”, he continues, “is the patient’s lack of respect because he is deprived of his chances of survival. I’m not spoiled, I don’t have Alzheimer’s, I still have an active life (as an automotive entrepreneur in automotive expertise, ed), I don’t want to be left to die. “
With the influx of patients with Covid-19, deprogramming is on the rise in hospitals: the rate is 62%, for example, at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, all sectors of activity combined.
Health Minister Olivier Véran assured that “surgery for cancer” must be preserved because “we do not protect the health of some by compromising that of others”. “This is one of the activities to which the Chu pays particular attention due to the possible loss of opportunities”, confirms the HCL, without specifying the data.
– Is prevention urgent? –
This principled position suffers from exceptions. The RoseUp association has received dozens of testimonials on an online platform since October 30, three quarters of which come from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, heavily exposed to the coronavirus.
“Psychologically, it’s difficult,” a patient from Isère told AFP on condition that he remains anonymous. She has already had a tumor removed, but the carrier of a BRCA gene mutation, which increases the likelihood of breast and ovarian cancer, had to undergo prophylactic removal of these organs in November.
A phone call was enough and the surgery, prepared for over a year, was postponed indefinitely, considered not a priority: “Of course, today I don’t have a tumor, but who says it in a few months, I won’t have one?” He asks the forty year old.
“Is prevention urgent? It’s the debate”, abounds another patient, a doctor by profession in the Rhone, whom an aggressive cancer, having requested the removal of one breast two years ago, has convinced to have the other kidnapped. The surgery, scheduled for November 5, was canceled the week before.
“We are told that we do not want to have to choose between two patients in the ICU, but in reality, we select upstream who will be operated on and when. This choice is not made,” said this 38-year-old woman.
– Waiting line –
The healthcare context also influences the screening and monitoring of patients.
“Having a colonoscopy under general anesthesia has become complicated,” regrets Jean-Pierre Martin, president of the League against cancer in the Rhone. At the national level, the association fears that tens of thousands of cancers have not been detected after the two inmates.
“People shouldn’t delay their evaluation: imaging, endoscopy are maintained,” Marie-Thérère Leccia, who chairs the medical committee of the University Hospital of Grenoble, told the press Thursday.
“The goal is to keep the treatment and diagnostics activity as long as possible,” says Patrice Peyrat, director of the operational platform at the Léon-Bérard cancer center in Lyon. Of the 278 patients registered for surgery since October 26, 50 have been deprogrammed, only two of whom have active cancer.
Still, “patients are queuing up and, in a few months, if their surgery poses a problem, you can’t stop them from thinking they’ve been victims of an injustice,” Martin points out.
Meanwhile, RoseUp is trying to provide them with a solution, on an ad hoc basis. This week, the association found a bed in Clermont-Ferrand for a patient whose prophylactic double mastectomy had been canceled in Lyon. “When a woman decides to have both breasts removed, it’s not cosmetic surgery,” says RoseUp director Céline Lis-Raoux.
© 2020 AFP
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