Posts Tagged cancer
The plight of the English patient
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 22/08/2007
The EUROCARE-4 study of cancer survival rates released yesterday by the Lancet Oncology journal does not make for comfortable reading for anyone in the UK, least of all the government. In a league of 22 European countries between 2000-02, England comes out 7th bottom, Northern Ireland 5th bottom and Scotland 3rd bottom in terms of the number of patients alive 5 years after diagnosis – much closer to the slightly inferior performance of countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic than the best performing countries such as Sweden, Finland and Switzerland. Cancer survival rates in these countries are some 10 to 15 percentage points better than the countries that make up the UK. The same trend is observed for individual conditions – survival rates from stomach cancer, for example, are as much as 86% higher in Germany than in England.
More worryingly still, is the picture painted over time. A second article, also released in the Lancet Oncology, performs a similar study for the years 1995-99. Comparing the two shows that while cancer survival rates have improved across the board, and the gap between those with the best and worst survival rates is narrowing, those in the UK remain ‘stubbornly low’. Tellingly, this study also found that the UK (along with Denmark) seems to be the exception to the broad trend that those countries that spent the most on health care generally get the better survival rates. So what’s gone wrong?
Cancer care: straining resources
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 17/05/2007
A study released yesterday by Cancer Research UK revealed that in the past 30 years, survival rates from cancer in the UK have almost doubled from 23.6% in 1971, to 46.2% in 2000/1. OECD statistics running up to 2003 show the trend continued. In terms of deaths from cancer before the age of 70 that were potentially preventable by good medical care, the UK witnessed a 3.29% improvement.
Many, including the government’s cancer tsar, Prof Mike Richards, expect Eurocare-4 statistics, to be published later this year, to show further progress. A large proportion of the extra funds the NHS has received since 2000 has been targeted at improving cancer care through the NHS Cancer Plan; 99.9% of suspected cancer patients urgently referred by their GP are now seen by a specialist within 2 weeks, compared with just 63% in 1997; the number of cancer specialists employed by the NHS has increased by 49%; and £520m has been invested in new specialist equipment.
But a more interesting point will be to see whether improvements in the UK (assuming there will be improvements), outstrip those in other countries.