Question reference: S6W-06769
- Asked by: Alexander Stewart, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 24 February 2022
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Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 8 March 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment Public Health Scotland has made of the reported backlog in the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what steps are being taken to address this.
Answer
The cancer pathology dashboard hosted on the COVID-19 wider impacts tool is Public Health Scotland’s rapid assessment of how many cancer diagnoses have been made compared to 2019 https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-covid-wider-impact/ .
However, we know that many Central Nervous System (CNS) tumours are not diagnosed by pathology and the Scottish Cancer Registry provides the gold standard measure of new cancer diagnoses. PHS will report on 2020 incidence in April of this year. The Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) dashboard (on the same site) is Public Health Scotland’s assessment of SACT, and CNS tumour treatment is available on that; and Public Health Scotland’s radiotherapy data is returned to NHS Digital, where they are presented on a dashboard.