14.10.14
GPs ‘missing opportunities’ to spot lung cancer early
GPs are “missing opportunities” to spot lung cancer at an early stage, meaning that one in three patients die within 90 days of diagnosis, research suggests.
A study of lung cancer cases in 20,142 people aged over 30 found one in 10 had died within a month of diagnosis and one in 20 were not diagnosed until after they died.
Dr Emma O'Dowd, who carried out the research at Nottingham University, said family doctors needed more help in recognising patients at a high risk of lung cancer.
Her research, published in the medical journal Thorax, found that “surprisingly” those who are given a late diagnosis on average visited their GP five times in the few months beforehand, more so than patients who lived longer. This counters a common preconception that those who die shortly after diagnosis did not seek medical attention.
She said it was therefore key to find out what symptoms they were displaying in those consultations and how they could be better identified by GPs as being linked to lung cancer.
Dr O’Dowd said: "Lung cancer can be difficult for doctors to distinguish from other lung diseases so we need to give them some tools that will help identify a patient as high risk.
"If we can diagnose patients at an earlier stage hopefully they can get curable treatment rather than palliative treatment which is what most patients are getting at the moment.
"It's not that we're trying to blame the GPs but if we have tools to identify these high risk people earlier than we should put them to use."
She added that most GPs are only likely to see one new case of lung cancer a year which is why it is important to promote risk assessment tools.
New software is being developed for doctors that would flag up the risk of lung cancer in patients by tracking their symptoms and lifestyle.
Dr Richard Roope, cancer lead for the Royal College of GPs, said that family doctors are doing a good job of referring suspected cancer patients with 75% being referred after only one or two GP consultations. He also pointed out that one-year survival rates for lung cancer patients are improving.
“Taking into account the global picture, GPs across the UK are doing very well considering the meagre resources available to us,” he said. “Funding for general practice is at an all-time low, we have a chronic shortage of doctors, and access to CT scanners, which would help in the diagnosis of lung cancer, is very limited in UK primary care.
“Instead of criticising GPs, we need to invest in general practice to allow us to employ more GPs and support staff and to give GPs more access to technology that could ultimately save our patients’ lives.”
Lung cancer kills more than 35,000 people a year and is the biggest cause of cancer death in the UK.
(Image: Lung cancer c. Sebastian Kaulitzki)
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