Signs And Symptoms - Cancer Research UK

Detecting cancer early – the second NAEDI Conference

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Flora Malein

Professor Mike Richards speaking at the first NAEDI conference in 2008

Diagnosing a cancer early is one of the factors that can make the biggest difference in its successful treatment.

Launched in 2008, the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI) is a partnership between Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health that aims to tackle diagnosing and detecting cancers early.

One of its key aims is to jump-start research into this crucial area, and last month, a diverse group of researchers descended on the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute for the second NAEDI research conference, to discuss different aspects of research on early cancer diagnosis.

Following an introduction and welcome from Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, Dr Harpal Kumar, the conference kicked off with a fascinating talk from US researcher Dr Christine Berg, the lead investigator on the USA’s national lung cancer screening trial.

Continue reading →

The challenge of spotting cancers in children

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Henry Scowcroft

Georgia was diagnosed with Wilms’ tumour

One Sunday evening in 2008, after giving her one-year-old daughter a bath, Ruth Hillman noticed Georgia’s tummy felt firmer than usual.

Alarm bells began to ring.

By Wednesday, after seeing several different doctors, Ruth and her husband Ben were told Georgia had a tumour. Further tests showed that it was a Wilms’ tumour – a form of kidney cancer – and Georgia needed intensive treatment.

Georgia’s story is ultimately a happy one – she’s now a healthy five-year-old, and recently started school. Her treatment – surgery and chemotherapy – means she’s among some 33,000 people alive in the UK today who beat cancer in childhood. Although progress in some cancer types has been slow, overall survival rates are now at an all-time high.

But could they be even higher? In the end, Georgia was diagnosed in time, but others aren’t so fortunate. And, as in adults, cancer treatments in children are generally less effective when the disease is spotted late.

They’re also often more intense. As a result, survivors can have long-term disabilities – and with more lives being saved, this has meant an ever-greater focus on how we manage cancers in the youngest members of society.

The problem is that cancers in children are rare, and their symptoms are hard to tell apart from a whole range of more common problems. The average GP will only ever see a single case in their entire career – if at all. And for parents, they may never suspect that an ache or a pain could be something more sinister than childhood’s day-to-day rough and tumble.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the issues surrounding spotting cancers in children, and what’s going on to try to improve things.

Continue reading →

News digest – Budget, bowel screening, Bluetooth, kids smoking and more

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Emma Smith

Read our news digest

The big news this week was the Budget – Chancellor George Osborne set out the government’s spending priorities for the forthcoming year. Here’s our reaction, plus a nice post from the Institute of Cancer Research looking at the implications for science funding.
Shocking new figures reveal that nearly 570 children start smoking for the first time every single day, according to the Daily Telegraph. This is why our campaign for standardized packaging is so important – it’s giving kids one less reason to start smoking.
The first invitations for a new form of bowel screening, known as Bowel Scope Screening, were sent out in England. This is great news as the test can both spot bowel cancer early and even prevent some people ever developing the disease, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Continue reading →

What about my type of cancer?

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Josephine Querido

We’re the only cancer charity in the UK fighting over 200 cancer types

“Why don’t you spend more on my cancer type?” and “why don’t you do more to highlight awareness?”

These are two questions we hear frequently, and topics that are close to many of our supporters’ hearts.

Understandably, everyone who has lost a loved one to cancer, or themselves struggled against the disease, wants to know that every effort is being made to tackle that particular cancer – whether it’s one of the more common forms such as bowel cancer or lung cancer, or a rarer cancer such as retinoblastoma.

Cancer is complex and it’s not just one disease. In fact, we’re the only cancer charity in the UK fighting over 200 cancer types. In an ideal world, we would make sure that research into all cancer types received the ‘perfect’ level of funding and equal prominence. But there are a number of reasons why this is a very difficult goal to achieve.

In this blog post we’ll look at why this is the case, and what we’re doing to try to address imbalances both in the research that gets funded, and in the coverage each cancer type receives.
Continue reading →

Is the healthcare system failing elderly people with cancer symptoms?

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Oliver Childs

A new report published today - and widely covered in the media – raises difficult questions about how cancers are diagnosed in elderly people in England. The findings are stark – almost 1 in 3 cancers in the over 70s (31 per cent) are diagnosed through an emergency hospital admission, rather than through other routes (such as being referred by their GP).

That’s almost twice the proportion of people under 70 who are diagnosed through an emergency hospital admission (17 per cent).

To put that in perspective, around 58,400 people a year in England are diagnosed with cancer through an emergency hospital admission, sometimes because their symptoms become so severe that they go straight to hospital themselves, or because they’re sent there by their GP. Of these, 38,300 are men and women over the age of 70.

Cancers diagnosed through emergency admission to hospital

This is worrying – people are much less likely to live beyond 12 months after they’ve been diagnosed through an emergency hospital admission. Clearly something in our healthcare set-up isn’t right if so many people, particularly older men and women, are slipping through the net and being diagnosed in an emergency.

So we urgently need to understand why such a high proportion of the elderly have an emergency diagnosis. After all, our population isn’t getting any younger, and this means more cancers are on the horizon.

This problem won’t go away unless something is changed in the healthcare system. The question is, what?

Continue reading →

Bowel cancer – 40 years of progress but early detection is key

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Henry Scowcroft

Spotting cancer early can save lives. Over the last nine weeks, the Department of Health has been running a campaign called ‘Be Clear on Cancer’, aimed at raising awareness of bowel cancer symptoms.

The campaign ended over the weekend, but keeping the focus on the disease, today marks the start of Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.

So we thought it would be a good idea to look at how things have changed for bowel cancer patients over the years, and how continued research has lead to a falling mortality rate.

In the graphic below, you can see how this improvement has been driven by research on bowel cancer, both by our own researchers and by scientists around the world. And you can scroll down to read about this research in more detail.

Download a high-resolution PDF version of this graphic

Continue reading →

Podcast: cancer genes, kids smoking, shunning sunbeds, and spotting the signs

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Kat Arney

Click on the logo to download the podcast

In this month’s podcast a landmark cancer study sheds light on tumour genes, and experts suggest that more breast cancer patients should have genetic tests.

New figures reveal worrying numbers of schoolchildren taking up smoking, and leading model agencies sign up to a no-sunbed policy.

Meanwhile, a new drug combo destroys pancreatic cancer in the lab, and our Delay Kills report shows that ignorance and fear are behind thousands of avoidable cancer deaths.

Listen now through the audio player below:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Or click here to download the podcast as an mp3.

Also, the podcast is available on iTunes to subscribe and download for free.

Alternatively, go to the podcast page on our website, where you can hear the show directly through our own Flash player and explore previous shows in the archive. And there’s also a full transcript of the podcast available here.

We hope you enjoy it – please do let us know what you think of the podcast in the comments below, or email us at podcast@cancer.org.uk.

Kat