Provincial officials, in launching the site this week say that the website shows wait times across the province according procedure, hospital and local health network, and patients can use the list to talk to their doctors about the possibility of having their surgery performed at a hospital with a shorter wait.

Ontarians can now click on to www.health.on, to find the wait times link, and see how long patients are waiting for treatment in the five key services: cataract surgery, cancer surgery, hip and knee replacements, selected cardiac procedures, and MRI and CT scans.

This Monday, the site showed that the median wait time for breast cancer surgery at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is 20 days, for example, compared to 11 days at the Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket.

Premier Dalton McGuinty says this is the first time current wait times information has ever been collected in Ontario, and the website will empower Ontarians to see just how much progress is being made when it comes to reducing wait times across the province.

Critics however say the website is about giving Ontarians more information, but does nothing to fix the problem of long wait times.

Although Ontario's initiative is new, other provinces already track wait times online.

British Columbia and Alberta publish wait times for the five key procedures by surgeon, and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia track times by region, while Manitoba does it for select medical procedures.

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Over 80 percent of the 583 women in the study reported satisfaction with having a CPM, although Dr. Frost and her team found that satisfaction depended on the type of surgical procedure -- women who had a subcutaneous mastectomy (about 95 percent of breast tissue removed with a small amount left behind the nipple while the skin, nipple and areola are preserved) reported more problems with reconstruction and fewer were satisfied with the procedure than those women who had a simple mastectomy (breast tissue and nipple removed). Additionally, the majority of women reported no change or favorable effects in sense of femininity, sexual relationships, stress in life, emotional stability, self-esteem and body appearance. Satisfaction levels were higher (83 percent) on average in comparison to those levels (70 percent) of women who had bilateral (both breasts) prophylactic mastectomies (BPM) -- as Dr. Frost learned in a previous study.1

Differing results suggest that different factors lead to a woman's decision to have a BPM as opposed to women who've had CPM after experiencing a diagnosis of cancer necessitating surgery on one breast. "Clearly, a woman diagnosed with a first breast cancer who has a family history of breast cancer is faced with complex decisions about the treatment of her cancer and her risk for cancer in the other breast," says Dr. Frost. "It is important that these women have information about the probable effectiveness, as well as psychological and social outcomes, of their options."

Some adverse psychological and social outcomes were noted for many women, including negative feelings toward body appearance (33 percent), loss of sense of femininity (26 percent), negative impact on sexual relationships (23 percent), added stress (17 percent), decrease in self-esteem (17 percent) or decrease in emotional stability (12 percent).

The women who participated in this study had a personal and family history of breast cancer and a CPM at Mayo Clinic between 1960 and 1993. Participants completed a study-specific questionnaire.

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