By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

FOR AN investment of little more than £1000 NHS Tayside expects to cut waiting times for breast cancer.

Within the next few weeks a radiographer at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital will undertake duties previously performed by a consultant, identifying and marking areas on the breast to be targeted by radiotherapy. A second radiographer is completing further training to take on the more skilled role.

Careful planning for radiotherapy to treat breast cancer is extremely important and uses computer technology to map the breast, marking targets for treatment in a bid to destroy diseased cells while avoiding surrounding healthy tissue or adversely affecting the lungs.

Patients from all over Tayside and Fife attend Ninewells for radiotherapy which requires vast and very expensive equipment that cannot be provided at local sites.

Health chiefs at a meeting of NHS Tayside’s redesign committee in Kings Cross Hospital, Dundee, yesterday heard that staff in the radiography department at Ninewells spotted an opportunity to cut down waiting times for patients, make better use of expensive equipment left “idle” and fill treatment sessions wasted because the consultant was absent.

The committee gave a small grant of just over £1000 to allow two radiographers to undertake study and training to enable them to perform the planning for radiotherapy without a consultant being present.

Head of the therapeutic radiography department Una Milne attended the committee and explained the extended role, informing members how their decision to make a very small investment would greatly benefit patients.

She said that during 2003 there were 90 patients who could not have their breasts marked and treatment planned on the day of their allocated hospital appointment because it coincided with their consultant’s “authorised absence”.

“One of the things we have identified very clearly is that when consultants are unavailable either because of annual leave or study leave, there are a lot of wasted radiotherapy planning slots,” she said.

Mrs Milne said that a course had been developed in conjunction with Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh to train radiographers to undertake breast mark up.

One radiographer from Ninewells had completed that training and another was still in training. The plan now was that from the end of next month or the beginning of August the specially trained radiographer would start to perform an extended role, marking up breasts and planning treatment in the absence of the consultant.

“That should cut down waiting times for people with breast cancer, and other people with cancer,” said Mrs Milne.