Although the Department of Health has set a number of targets for waiting times in cancer care it has not yet made specific recommendations for waiting times for chemotherapy.

In the early 1990s the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Radiologists did issue guidance to specialists on this subject. There recommendations were:

• urgent chemotherapy: should ideally start within 24 hours of deciding it is needed. With a maximum delay of 48 hours
• intensive or complex chemotherapy, which might need some careful preparation, should ideally start within one week with a maximum delay of three weeks
• chemotherapy given to relieve distressing symptoms for people with advanced, incurable cancer (palliative chemotherapy) should ideally start within 48 hours with a maximum delay of 2 weeks.

Since these guidelines were produced the demand for chemotherapy has increased considerably and relatively little has been done to increase the resources to meet these needs so in many hospitals it is impossible to meet these targets.

The present government is investing heavily to improve the service but it will take some time for this to make any difference in practice.

Having said this, much chemotherapy today is given as a precautionary measure after initial treatment with surgery (and/or radiotherapy). (It sounds as though this is what is intended for your son.) This type of chemotherapy, which is called adjuvant therapy, is very worthwhile and although it is far from ideal to have to wait , it may be less vital if it is delayed for a few weeks.

Although most chemotherapy departments are very busy, and under great pressure, they will usually be able to do treatment that is urgently needed quite quickly but this does mean that there is often a waiting time of a few weeks for the less urgent, precautionary or adjuvant, types of chemotherapy.