All people in England who have smoked to be offered middle-age lung screening

Everyone who has ever smoked in England is to be offered lung screening in middle age under plans to detect and treat cancer earlier.

Lung cancer kills about 35,000 people every year, and is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, accounting for one in five. It also has one of the worst cancer survival rates, which is largely attributed to diagnoses at a late stage when treatment is less likely to be effective.

Millions of people will be invited for lung checks in an effort to improve survival rates. About a million screenings of people aged 55 to 74 will be carried out every year under the programme.

It follows a successful pilot of the scheme in deprived areas of the country where people are four times more likely to smoke. It resulted in more than 2,000 people being detected as having cancer, 76% of them at an earlier stage compared with 29% outside the programme in 2019.

“Identifying lung cancer early saves lives, and the expansion of the NHS’s targeted lung health check programme is another landmark step forward in our drive to find and treat more people living with this devastating disease at the earliest stage,” said the chief executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard.

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Source: The Guardian, 26 June 2023