CONTROVERSIAL plans to cut the number of hospitals offering inpatient services for leukaemia sufferers have been widened.
Campaigners have fought proposals to close the six-bed haematology ward at Darlington Memorial Hospital and merge it with a unit at Bishop Auckland General Hospital.
Now bosses at the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust have announced that a review of inpatient haematology services will be extended to include the University Hospital of North Durham.
The service provides care for patients with leukaemia and other disorders affecting the blood.
Every year the trust treats about 600 haematology patients on an inpatient basis. Most patients are seen as outpatients and day cases. The Darlington unit was opened in the 1980s after campaigners raised almost £300,000.
Medical Director Bob Aitken said a review would determine whether some reorganisation was necessary.
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