North West Has Highest Lung Cancer Death Rate In England

Liverpool Primary Care Trust has the highest mortality rate for lung cancer in the country, a new report claims.

That was the bad news highlighted by BBC news website last month.

The news article stated that according to the research by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, both Manchester and Liverpool have the highest incidences of the disease, claiming that the chances of survival are a "postcode lottery" with patients in Herefordshire three times more likely to survive than those in Liverpool.
 
The research report, entitled Explaining Variations in Lung Cancer in England, also found significant differences in how lung cancer patients are treated in different parts of the country, says the BBC News article. The report was launched at the House of Commons on Tuesday 12th July.

It quotes Dr Rosemary Gillespie, chief executive of The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, as saying:

"Your chance of surviving lung cancer and receiving a treatment which could benefit you should not be decided by where you live in the country.

Sadly, it is clear that this is indeed the case and there is significant geographical variation in patient survival and patient access to care and treatment."

The news item continues:

The report found chances of seeing specialist nurses and the availability of different treatment such as surgery or chemotherapy or hospital admission times all varied depending on where a patient lives.

Dr Gillespie said it was hoped the report will help improve the standards and increase survival rates across the country.

Lung cancer is still the most common cause of cancer death in England.

One of the biggest problems was many people were diagnosed too late, it found.
Only 30% of lung cancer patients survived more than a year past diagnoses compared to 96% of those with breast cancer.

It claimed could be in part due to a long road to diagnoses with a third of patients reporting they saw their GP three times or more before eventually being diagnosed.

Key findings of the report include:

• There is a threefold difference in mortality with Liverpool PCT having the highest rates of mortality compared with Herefordshire PCT which had the lowest
  
  
• The average length of survival for a lung cancer patient after diagnosis is only 188.5 days but varies from 150 days for patients living in Arden Cancer Network, which includes Coventry, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to 224 days for people living in the Thames Valley area
  
  
• Your chance of surviving for up to a year after your diagnosis also varies depending on where you live. Patients living in Kensington and Chelsea PCT have the highest one year survival rate at 43.7% compared with Herefordshire PCT, where only around 15 out of 100 lung cancer patients survive for 1 year
  
  
• People living in deprived areas are less likely to have received chemotherapy treatment
  
  
• Surgery rates are low across the country with just 19.9% of lung cancer patients receiving surgery in the best performing area, North East London Cancer Network, where a patient is more than twice as likely to receive cancer surgery as a patient in Sussex Cancer Network
  
  
• The chance of seeing a specialist lung cancer nurse also depends on where you live, ranging from 13.6% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer in Kent and Medway Cancer Network compared with 90.4% in Dorset
  
  
• The chance of receiving treatment, such as surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, also varies across England. Seven out of ten patients received active treatments in the Peninsula Cancer Network, which covers Devon and Cornwall, compared with only four in ten patients in the Mount Vernon Cancer Network, which encompasses Hertfordshire, Luton and South Bedfordshire
  
  
• There is a significant difference across the country in the number of days a patient spent in hospital after being admitted as an emergency. In Kensington and Chelsea PCT, patients spent around 16 days in hospital compared with only 5 days for patients in Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT

You can download a copy of the full report from the E-Library database, selecting the category 'Cancer'

Source: BBC news website

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