Statistics - Cancer Research UK - Science Update blog

Why are oesophageal cancer rates going up in men?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Henry Scowcroft

Oesophageal cancer rates are on the rise

Many people have never even heard of cancer of the oesophagus – a form of cancer affecting the pipe that connects the mouth to the top of the stomach.

Yet rates of this cancer are on the rise.

According to new figures we released today, the rise is most rapid in men – among whom a particular form of the disease, called adenocarcinoma, is one of the fastest rising cancers in the UK.

But what’s causing this rise? And – most importantly – what can be done about it?

In this post, we’ll look at what’s going on, and whether our lifestyles might be behind the rise.

And we’ll also meet a heroic team of marathon-running medics who are doing everything they can to change the picture for patients diagnosed with oesophageal cancer – one of the hardest forms of cancer to treat successfully, but one which generally gets little attention in the media.

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Breast cancer in the UK: can we do even better?

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Hazel Nunn

UK breast cancer survival is worse than in comparable countries – why?

In the UK we’re making great progress against breast cancer – over 85 per cent of women diagnosed with the disease survive for at least five years. And around two thirds of all women diagnosed with breast cancer can expect to survive their disease for at least 20 years.

But today’s results from the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) – a study of cancer survival rates in some of the worlds’ richest countries – serve as a reminder that we could be doing even better, and it gives some clues about how.

It’s the latest in a string of important papers from ICBP. The first showed that while UK survival is improving, it lags behind the best in the world. And for the four cancers studied in ICBP, it is only in breast cancer that are we closing the gap.

Two recent papers examined the reasons for the UK’s relatively poor ovarian and lung cancer survival. They suggested that the differences between countries – and the UK’s poorer statistics – were caused more by differences in access to treatment than by being diagnosed at a late stage.

The new research, which drew on data from more than 250,000 breast cancer patients, paints a similar picture. It shows that survival rates for women diagnosed in the UK are lower than those in Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark or Sweden – with 87 per cent of women survived their disease for at least three years after diagnosis (known as ‘three-year survival’) compared with 94 per cent in Canada (the highest in the study).

Although the overall differences between the countries weren’t that large – women with breast cancer generally fare well across all the countries studied – a closer look at the numbers reveals some good and some bad news.

This is possible because, like the lung and ovarian cancer studies, the new analysis also looked at the proportion of breast cancers diagnosed at different stages of the disease, and tallied this against the chances of surviving at each of these stages. This yields important clues about the root causes of the UK’s poorer breast cancer survival. Let’s have a look at the details.

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Introducing our latest arsenal in the fight against cancer

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Laura Bell

Our committee has invested £23million in new research

Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we’re able to spend hundreds of millions of pounds every year on life-saving cancer research.

And our highly experienced Science Committee makes sure this money goes to fund the most creative, promising and innovative research in the UK.

The committee recently met to decide which pioneering new research projects have what it takes to lead the fight against cancer.

After careful consideration the committee chose to spend over £23million in world class research across a spectrum of work – from screening to trials and cancer biology.

Here are some of the highlights.

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Lung cancer in the UK – earlier diagnosis and better treatment are crucial

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Samantha Harrison

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.

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Spreading the word about cancer worldwide

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Hazel Nunn

Today is World Cancer Day. In the UK barely a day goes by without a cancer story in the headlines or politicians debating a cancer-related issue. Here cancer is high on the political agenda and in the public consciousness – and rightly so.

But that’s not true everywhere. In countries threatened by a swathe of serious public health issues, cancer can be all but forgotten.

World Cancer Day is about making sure that doesn’t happen. It’s also an opportunity for an organisation like Cancer Research UK to reflect on our role in the global fight against cancer.

What’s World Cancer Day about?

This year’s focus is on dispelling damaging myths and misconceptions about cancer.

The four myths that they are hoping to bust are:

Cancer is an issue of the wealthy, elderly and developed countries
Cancer is a death sentence
Cancer is my fate
Cancer is just a health issue.

We’d counter each of these in turn by saying:

Cancer is a global issue
More people are surviving cancer than ever before
Tobacco and infection are the most common causes of cancer worldwide
Cancer is a social, economic and political issue.

Here we explain a little more about each of these, and how Cancer Research UK is working to improve things on a global level.

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Men’s cancer risk is climbing: what can we do about it?

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Oliver Childs

If current trends continue, half of UK men born in 2027 will develop cancer

A boy born in 2027 in the UK will have a one in two chance of developing cancer over the course of his lifetime, according to new figures we released today.

In other words, 50 in every 100 UK men in the future are likely to hear the words “you have cancer” at some point in their lifetime. However you say it, that’s clearly not a positive headline.

But crucially, this increasing lifetime risk of cancer is balanced by another powerful force – that of increasing survival rates. Against a backdrop of increasing cancer risk over the past 40 years, survival rates have doubled in the UK.

This is thanks to our greatest weapon against cancer – research, be it new treatments or new ways to prevent people getting cancer in the first place.

Read on for more in-depth analysis of today’s report, and for the visually-minded, this short animation has the key facts:

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The NHS reforms – are they affecting cancer care?

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Henry Scowcroft

The NHS reorganisation comes into full effect next April

Next April, the Government’s much-discussed NHS reforms come in to full effect.

But preparation is already underway for what many see as one of the biggest changes to the NHS’s structure in its lifetime.

Staff around the NHS are being given new roles and responsibilities. Old regional structures are being replaced with newer, local ones. And – in keeping with these austere times – belts are being tightened.

Given the nature and scale of these reforms, earlier this year we asked a team of independent academics at the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham to investigate how they were affecting cancer care on the ground.

The Birmingham team did two things. First, they analysed publicly available data on waiting times and budgets across the NHS. Secondly, they conducted more than fifty in-depth interviews with key NHS staff from a variety of roles around the country, asking them how things were faring.

Today we’ve published their final report on our website (you can download a PDF of the whole thing here, and here’s an executive summary).

Their findings are mixed. As well as good news, there are areas of real concern.

On the one hand, waiting times for most things seem stable. This is reassuring, particularly given the growth in the UK population (which is also getting older – meaning increased cancer rates).

On the other hand, cancer budgets have decreased in real terms, and there’s widespread anxiety among interviewees about the potential loss of expertise, and fragmentation of services.

Below we’ll take a deeper look at the report’s findings. But first, we’ll briefly discuss what the reforms mean, and how the NHS is changing.

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