The cancer treatment that hasn't been used once: How patients with rare tumours are being denied lifesaving therapy available on the NHS

Liver cancer patients with a uncommon benignant of tumour are being denied a lifesaving attraction contempt its support for usage connected the NHS.

A starring crab foundation is present calling for action, claiming that sufferers are being 'left successful limbo'.

The treatment, called selective interior radiation therapy (SIRT), was approved past year, offering a lifeline for patients with a uncommon neuroendocrine tumour (NET) successful the liver.

At the time, then-health curate Andrew Stephenson welcomed the determination arsenic 1 which 'not lone helps crab patients to get backmost to surviving their lives but helps escaped up NHS resources and chopped waiting lists'.

But The Mail connected Sunday has learned that not a azygous diligent has received the SIRT attraction arsenic the NHS has not funded it.

'It is wholly unacceptable that a attraction which has been deemed safe, effectual and cost-efficient is inactive not being made available,' says Layla Stephen, an NET diligent and manager astatine the crab foundation Planets.

'People with NETs don't person clip to hold – they request entree to the champion treatments now, not successful different twelvemonth oregon two.'

About 6,000 radical successful the UK are diagnosed with an NET each year. The tumours are usually recovered successful the pancreas, bowel oregon lungs but tin besides make successful different parts of the body.

Without SIRT, options for astir patients are constricted to surgery.

During the treatment, millions of microspheres – radioactive beads smaller than the width of a quality hairsbreadth – are injected into the liver's humor supply. 

These instrumentality to tiny humor vessels successful the tumour and merchandise radiation that destroys the crab cells.

When NHS spending watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that SIRT should beryllium funded by the NHS, it said it resulted successful less broadside effects, faster betterment times and amended prime of beingness for patients compared with country oregon chemotherapy. It besides recovered a amended wide endurance rate.

An NHS spokesperson said: 'The NHS is processing a nationalist argumentation connected SIRT to guarantee each patients crossed England person the champion imaginable treatment.'