Pill camera technology helping cancer patients in Bedfordshire get diagnosed

A meeting this week was told that the replacement for more traditional endoscopes is helping hospitals in Bedford and Luton recover from the impact of covid-19.

Dr James Ramsay, the cancer lead and deputy medical director at the new Bedfordshire Hospitals Trust, said: “Rather than inserting cameras we’ve been using pill cams which are devices which the patients can actually swallow, and they will take images as the pill passes through the gastrointestinal tract.

“We’ve been adopting these innovations and the Luton and Bedford hospitals are pioneering this piece of work across the east of England,” he told Bedford Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee.

Dr Ramsay said the trust had been using pill cams mainly for inflammatory bowel disease but the technology itself has changed, allowing different parts of the guts to be examined.

Members of the committee quizzed Dr Ramsay about a backlog of patients at Bedford whose treatments were delayed because of the impact of coronavirus.

Traditional endoscopy was stopped following national guidance around coronavirus, which created much of the problem with extended waiting times.

At one stage some 220 people were in the backlog, he said, but that this has been brought down, as had the number of breaches of time limits on stages of treatment.

But Dr Ramsay admitted that there is still a ‘challenge’ with lung cancer patients seeking treatments late in the day or leaving it until there is an emergency situation.

“We are also seeing patients coming through emergency pathways,” he said.

“When patients present in those ways they typically present with later stage disease, have poorer outcomes and can have decreased treatment opportunity.”

But he said that the local NHS remains “open for business” and he expects that will be the case even if there is a third wave of covid in January and February.

“Our priority will be in maintaining cancer services,” he said.

The committee also discussed the circumstances in which patients have been told that they have cancer, at so called breaking bad news meetings.

Such bad news meetings have to be held face to face, but good news meetings can be held via video conferencing or on the phone.

Cllr Dean Crofts (Lib Dem, Kingsbrook) asked: “Can you reassure the public that not everybody that’s invited for a face to face will have cancer?

“That’s what it sounded like: if you have cancer you’ll be invited for a face to face. If you don’t we can tell you over the phone or by video cam.”

Dr Ramsay said: “I’ll take that back to look at how we communicate, see and follow up patients.”