Hundreds of people have had lung cancers spotted and diagnosed earlier through an NHS mobile screening programme, NHS England has said, as the health service works to regain ground lost during the pandemic.
The community initiative, part of the NHS Targeted Lung Health Check Programme, has seen more than three-quarters (77%) of cancers caught at either stage one or two, giving patients a much better chance of beating the illness. In all, more than 600 people have been diagnosed earlier as a result, it said.
This compared to less than a third of cancers caught at either stage one or two in 2018, it added.
The mobile lung screening trucks are scanning those most at risk from lung cancer, including current and ex-smokers, inviting them for an ‘MOT’ of their lungs and an on-the-spot chest scan for those at highest risk.
However, the NHS faces something of an uphill struggle to catch up ground lost during the pandemic.
Last year, the charity Cancer Research UK warned that urgent referrals for patients with suspected lung cancer have dropped by a third from a combination of pandemic-related delays and people feeling reluctant to come forward and get symptoms checked out.
Last July, too, the Taskforce for Lung Health warned that many patients were waiting six months for a lung cancer diagnosis and some as long as a year.
And an analysis in March this year by Asthma + Lung UK suggested Turkey is the only European country to have a higher death rate for lung conditions than the UK, with people in the UK being three times more likely to die from lung disease than in Finland, which has the lowest lung disease death rates in Europe.
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The latest NHS figures concede that only a third (35%) of patients go to their lung health check when invited by the NHS.
Nevertheless a further 20 NHS lung truck sites are due to go live shortly, with the capacity to invite 750,000 more people at increased risk for a check, NHS England said, in a further effort to catch thousands more cancers at an earlier stage.
So far, the 23 existing truck sites had issued up to 25,000 invitations every month. The NHS elective recovery plan agreed earlier this year has set a target to increase capacity to deliver around 17 million diagnostic tests over a three-year period.
Dame Cally Palmer, NHS cancer director, said: “These lung checks can save lives – by going out into communities we find more people who may not have otherwise realised they have lung cancer – with hundreds already diagnosed and hundreds of thousands due to be invited.
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“The rollout of our Targeted Lung Health Check Programme is a huge step towards reaching our NHS Long Term Plan ambitions of catching thousands more cancers at an earlier stage when they are easier to treat,” she added.
The NHS lung trucks are located in community sites including supermarket car parks, sports and shopping centres. They also work to identify people with other undiagnosed conditions including respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
