Barts named blood cancer centre of excellence
St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been named a national centre of excellence for treating a type of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow.
Every year hundreds of patients visit the Barts Cancer Centre at St Bartholomew’s for treatment of myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow for which there is no cure.
The team recently completed the Clinical Service Excellence Programme (CSEP), a national accreditation scheme from Myeloma UK, the leading UK charity for people affected by the condition.
To achieve centre of excellence status, hospitals must demonstrate that they deliver first class care for myeloma patients, including individualised treatment programmes.
They must also share knowledge with other providers and involve patients and their loved ones in how services are designed.
Approximately 5,900 people are diagnosed with myeloma every year in the UK, with around three quarters of those diagnosed aged 65 and over.
Myeloma doesn't usually cause a lump or tumour. Instead, it damages the bones and affects the production of healthy blood cells. It can affect many places in the body including the spine, skull, pelvis and ribs.
Despite being the third most common type of blood cancer, myeloma is especially difficult to detect as symptoms, chief among them pain, easily broken bones, fatigue and recurring infection, are often linked to general ageing or minor conditions.
While it is incurable, myeloma is treatable in the majority of cases. Treatment is aimed at controlling the disease, relieving the complications and symptoms it causes, and extending and improving patients’ quality of life.
Rhys Owens, a senior projects officer for clinical practice services at Myeloma UK, said: "Myeloma is a challenging cancer that keeps coming back and can be really difficult to cope with, both physically and mentally, and the team at St Bartholomew’s Hospital goes the extra mile day after day to ease patients’ burden.
"Staff hold fortnightly patient and family pre-transplant seminars to take them through what to expect and make the prospect of starting treatment a little less frightening.
"They also work very hard to increase the number of people taking part in life-saving clinical trials, particularly those from ethnic minority groups. This is absolutely vital since myeloma is two to three times more common in black people.
"Colleagues' efforts to give patients a fighting chance to live well with incurable cancer are truly inspiring."
Dr Heather Oakervee, a consultant haemato-oncologist and Clinical Director of Novel Therapies at Barts Cancer Centre, said: "We are extremely grateful to the team at Myeloma UK and the CSEP for recognising the efforts of our team at St Bartholomew’s. We were proud to achieve a score of 97% in their assessment – the joint highest they have ever awarded.
"We work hard to deliver care to our wonderful patient group, some of whom travel a great distance to receive care.
"We are lucky to work at a Trust which champions the services of haemato-oncology within our cancer centre, with the additional support of our excellent cardiology centre.
"We will share this award with our clinical nurse specialists, doctors, pharmacists, chemotherapy nurses and the teams on our wards and chemotherapy day units who all contribute so much to the care of our patients with myeloma."
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