Mass screening for top cancer killer

Around 7,000 people are set to be screened during testing, which will be carried out in mobile vans travelling to Leeds South & East and Leeds West CCGs.

Another £1m is to be spent on new initiatives to tackle lung and bowel cancer in Hull, which has the highest incidence and mortality rates for cancer in the region.

In all five projects - and a total £7m will be spent - as part of the charity’s wider strategy to ensure 2,000 more people living in Yorkshire survive cancer every year by 2025.

Lung cancer is the region’s biggest cancer killer, with around 4,500 people diagnosed every year and most patients presenting with advanced, incurable disease.

The Leeds trial, which is due to start in early 2018, will focus on smokers and ex-smokers, aged 55 to 80 years and its results could be used to plan for a national screening programme. It could lead to 289 cancers being diagnosed, but 80 per cent of those patients are expected to survive 10 years.

Dr Matthew Callister, Consultant in Respiratory Medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said hundreds of lives could be saved in Yorkshire every year if screening was introduced: “Checking people at high risk of lung cancer with regular scans detects early, curable cancer and reduces deaths by one fifth.

“Lung cancer screening is not currently available in the UK, and it is not clear exactly which people would most benefit.”

The charity will also invest £712,501 in a community health campaign in Hull led by Professor Una Macleod, focussing on raising awareness of lung cancer symptoms and encouraging smokers and ex-smokers to have checks. The team will work with GPs to make it easier for people to get appointments and referrals for chest x-rays.

A second project in Hull, costing £347,666, will focus on improving take-up of a new test for bowel cancer, called bowel scope screening, which is being gradually rolled out across England and will eventually be made available to all men and women aged 55. Currently it is offered by six GP practices in Hull, rising to 27 by April.

Researchers from Leeds will also join colleagues in Manchester in a £272,142 study to examine which areas of the heart are most susceptible to damage during radiotherapy for lung cancer, so they can be avoided or protected. Finally £486,014 is being invested in an online health questionnaire project aimed at improving the early diagnosis of cancer in disadvantaged communities.

The charity’s interim chief executive Dr Kathryn Scott said she was “incredibly grateful” to their supporters, adding: “These projects are the result of an extensive process, involving expert advice from the country’s very best researchers, to determine how the charity can have the biggest possible impact on cancer survival rates in Yorkshire.”