IF POSITIVE headlines about our health service are unusual, a positive news story about lung cancer is rarer still. Yesterday’s launch of the Irish Cancer Society’s 2011 lung cancer awareness campaign highlighted the news that patients with the disease are being diagnosed faster and treated sooner.
It says this is the result of new referral guidelines for family doctors and the setting up of rapid access clinics in cancer centres throughout the Republic.
Less than 12 per cent of people with lung cancer are alive five years after diagnosis. It is the most common cause of death from cancer in the State, with 1,819 people dying from it last year.
There are a number of reasons for the prognosis being so poor. Lung cancer is especially prevalent in lower socioeconomic groups where smoking levels are highest; it is usually diagnosed quite late in the illness, meaning the disease has had time to spread; there is no reliable screening test; and because of its close link with smoking it is seen, to some extent, as self-inflicted - a characteristic that has, in the past, promoted a certain public and professional nihilism towards the disease.
But the outlook is better. In the past, up to 50 per cent of lung cancer patients received no treatment. Now, under the direction of the National Cancer Control Programme, the aim is for 95 per cent of patients referred to specialist clinics to be seen within two weeks.
However, there is also a need to increase public awareness of the signs and symptoms and to encourage people to attend their GPs should they experience any of the following: a cough that doesn’t go away or a change in a long-term cough; feeling short of breath or wheezing; repeated chest infections that won’t go away even after antibiotics; coughing up bloodstained phlegm; chest pain on coughing or breathing in; and feeling more tired than usual with unexplained weight loss.
Early detection of lung cancer brings with it a greater chance of effective treatment and cure. Unlike some other cancers there is, as yet, no reliable screening test for the disease. But progress is being made in identifying how targeting smokers and others to undergo screening using CT scans could help earlier detection. Recent progress in the development of specialised blood tests offers the prospect of more accurate diagnosis.
The success of anti-smoking campaigns has contributed to a reduction in the chances of younger men dying from lung cancer. However, with more women smokers, female lung cancer rates are on the rise.
In addition, there has been a change in the type of cancer diagnosed in both sexes, a development possibly linked to a reduction in the use of unfiltered cigarettes.
Now that lung cancer services are more focused and co-ordinated, early detection and survival rates should improve. But our national cancer control plan must focus its efforts on older people and those from deprived areas in particular. International experience suggests progress in prevention may otherwise not be equally spread across socioeconomic groups.