A HEALTH trust is to be asked to back a plan to remove all inpatient breast surgery from the Kent and Canterbury Hospital despite opposition from all the area's breast surgeons.

At its meeting on Friday the East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust will be asked to support the third of three options for the re-organisation of services at acute hospitals in the area.

If it does, option three will be submitted to the four primary care trust boards who will make the final decision.

Consultation over which of the three options should be adopted ended on Monday.

They all cover the siting of various services not included in the decision made by John Hutton, Secretary of State for Health, in July.

If the trust does back option three it will mean inpatient breast surgery will be divided among the Queen Mother Hospital at Margate and William Harvey at Ashford.

It also means that all elective orthopaedic surgery will be carried out at those two hospitals. K&C will get a low risk birthing unit.

In its response to the three options campaign group Concern for Health in East Kent (CHEK) says it rejects option three and supports option one, which centralises all breast and elective orthopaedic surgery at K&C.

It says that the 500 breast surgery cases a year in East Kent is too small to be split between two sites 40 miles apart and the new £1.2million mammography suite at K&C will have to be moved or mothballed as a result.

Patient watchdog group Canterbury and Thanet Community Health Council says it cannot fully endorse any one option but agrees that it would be better for patients to have one centre only for breast surgery and elective inpatient orthopaedics at K&C.

MP Julian Brazier said there was an overwhelming case for centralising breast and elective orthopaedic surgery at Kent and Canterbury. He said any loss of complex maternity services would be severely felt in the area, especially by poorer families whose access to Margate and Ashford was so poor.

Friday's trust board meeting takes place at 9.30am in Deal Town Hall. It is open to the public.