A TOP doctor today claimed that patients were being subjected to 'treatment by postcode' after it was revealed that people were being forced to wait almost a year for a scan to diagnose a crippling bone disease.

A reduction in funding has meant patients at high risk of osteoporosis - also known as brittle bone disease - are waiting 45 weeks for a scan to diagnose their problem before they can be treated.

A £40,000 bone densitometer suite, paid for by charitable funds and local groups three years ago, is now being used to diagnose just seven patients a week at Accrington Victoria Hospital - while 275 East Lancashire people are on the waiting list.

The National Osteoporosis Society and the Department of Health recommend a minimum 80 scans a week are needed for a population the size of East Lancashire's.

Today, local consultant physician Dr Robert Wilkinson said the delay meant patients would suffer more irreversible bone damage, which may lead to hip and spine fractures, before they received the correct treatment.

He said: "It's just treatment by postcode again. In the rich South East, they even have specialist osteoporosis nurses, but in the poor North West we lose out."

In the worst cases, sufferers can lose up to a foot in height as bone crumbles, crushing the vertebrae down, while hip fractures can mean expensive replacement operations. Drugs and vitamin and mineral supplements can prevent bones becoming thinner, but they cannot make them stronger again.

He said: "There's no way of telling if someone has osteoporosis until they have a scan and only then can we treat them. There are few symptoms until you have a fracture, when it's too late."

Patients are referred to the unit if they have a high risk of developing brittle bone disease. About 70 per cent of patients who receive scans need treatment and they are later re-scanned to check the treatment is working.

Dr Wilkinson said the backlog had built up since April, when primary care groups replaced the system of GP fundholders. The fundholders, who controlled their own budgets, had paid for an extra one or two sessions a week.

Catharine Warland, chairman of Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley branch of the National Osteoporosis Society, said she was appalled that expensive equipment was going to waste.

She said: "It's very disappointing to us when we have paid several thousand pounds to help furnish the suite. It's a preventable disease which affects one in three women and one in 12 men, but it's not being taken seriously."

But Dr Stephen Morton, director of public health at the East Lancashire Health Authority, said there was no evidence that densitometry scans prevented later fractures.

He said: "We have a policy that it should not be used routinely unless it's going to affect the management of the patient because it's such a common disease. If you have to wait for a bone scan it's not going to have an enormous effect.

"We have a lot of important developments that we would like to fund as soon as money's available and the bone densitometry is not on that list at all."

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