Lung cancer is often diagnosed at a late stage
We’ve blogged before about the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) – a collaboration between researchers trying to understand how and why cancer survival varies between different countries.
Earlier this month, they looked into differences in attitudes to, and awareness of, cancer and its symptoms (read more in this post).
And last year, they published work looking at differences in ovarian cancer survival rates, (which you can read about here).
As we explained at the time, this research showed that late diagnosis is unlikely to be the main reason for the poor UK ovarian cancer survival.
Instead, the ICBP found that UK women with advanced disease (i.e. that has spread) had worse chances of survival than those in other countries. Differences treatment in the UK may be contributing to this lower survival.
Today, the ICBP published a new paper looking at lung cancer survival. And again, it looks as though lack of treatment could be among the reasons behind the UK’s poor survival, but they also found evidence that late diagnosis is a contributing factor.
UK lung cancer patients also seem to be less likely to live for one year or longer after diagnosis than their counterparts in Australia, Norway, Canada and Denmark.
Let’s have a look at the details.