One of the women in my breast cancer survivors’ Facebook group is under extreme stress because an ultrasound found a malignant 11 cm mass in her husband’s liver.
This is her post:
**Pet Scan today, at 7 am. Endoscopy took 3 days to schedule and we had to jump through hoops to get it for tomorrow. They initially wanted to schedule an office visit for June 10th! to review the procedure and then schedule it about 2 weeks later. It took dozens of phone calls and we had to play the CANCER CARD! We can't wait another 4 weeks to determine if this is a metastases from an Upper GI cancer! (This is week 5 of tests....another 4 weeks before another scan/biopsy to determine what cancer he has!!!!! We are absolutely NUTS and TERRIFIED!)**
**This whole system is broken. People who can’t navigate it or who don’t have an advocate to fight it, will probably die. Not only do they not have enough providers, schedulers,and appts, AND scheduling appts is a nightmare, they have a shortage on contrast. This imaging center canceled two appts, while I am waiting, saying they won’t get their shipment from China, until mid-July and telling people to call their doctors to figure out where they can go. More waiting for them!**
This problem is one result of supply chain problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/health/dye-contrast-scan-…
**Patients Face Long Delays for Imaging of Cancers and Other Diseases**
**Many U.S. hospitals are postponing scans used to diagnose diseases after a Covid lockdown in China hobbled the main U.S. supplier of an imaging chemical.**
**By Reed Abelson, The New York Times, May 26, 2022**
**...**
**A nationwide shortage of the imaging agents needed for a CT scan — the result of the recent lockdown in Shanghai to quell a Covid outbreak — has prompted hospitals to ration these tests except in emergencies...**
**An estimated 50 million exams with contrast agents are performed each year in the United States, and as many as half the nation’s hospitals are affected by the shortage. Some are reserving much of their supply on hand for use in emergency rooms — where quick, accurate assessments are most dire.**
**The shortage of a vital imaging agent is the latest example of the country’s vulnerability to disruptions in the global supply chain and its overreliance on a small number of manufacturers for such critical products. The Shanghai plant shuttered by the lockdown is operated by GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric and one of two major suppliers of the iodinated contrast materials. The company supplies its dyes, Omnipaque and Visipaque, for the United States....Yet even though GE Healthcare said this week that the situation was improving now that the plant had reopened, the shortages and patient delays could persist well into the summer because of a lag in how quickly replenished supplies could be distributed....**
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Many people didn’t go for routine checkups during the Covid pandemic of 2020-2021, leading to an increase of more advanced cancers.
On a Macro scale, supply chains with very little redundancy (few suppliers, restricted distribution) are vulnerable to disruption. Who would have thought that baby formula or CT contrast media would suddenly become unavailable? It’s a matter of life and death for those who are affected. But if someone had asked last year whether baby formula was such a critical product that a shortage would lead to invoking the Defense Production Act, people would have laughed.
We take so much for granted. The vulnerability and fragility of our civilization is being revealed. Leaders of government and industry will seriously discuss bringing production back to the U.S. and developing multiple sources. But every move away from “just in time” and global sourcing will increase prices and lead to inflation.
On a personal scale – stay healthy! This is a bad time to get sick. It may be hard to schedule a diagnostic scan.
Wendy