Lung cancer treatment boost

Research by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation revealed a postcode lottery in treatment, funding and outcomes for patients with the disease.

According to the report, Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust was among the top performers.

In 2009-2010, the most recent year for which figures were available, £3.79m was spent on treating lung cancer in the county, the sixth highest amount spent by any primary care trust.

That was a rise in funding of 82.8 per cent from the previous year, which was the seventh largest PCT funding increase from 2008-2009 to 2009-2010.

The charity’s chief executive Dr Rosemary Gillespie: said: “Despite recent advances, lung cancer remains a devastating disease and the most common cause of cancer death in England.

“Your chances of surviving lung cancer, and receiving treatment which could benefit you, should not be decided by where you live in the country.

“Sadly it is clear that this is indeed the case and there is significant geographical variation in patient survival and access to care and treatment.”

The report also highlighted differences in one-year and five-year survival rates, although data was from 2006 for one-year survival and across 1998 to 2002 for five-year survival.

In Oxfordshire, the one-year survival rate for people diagnosed with the disease was 27.2 per cent, which was broadly average, although the five year survival rate at 6.2 per cent was among the lowest, with only 21 PCTs having a lower rate.

But the mortality rate overall, based on figures from 2004-2006, was the eighth lowest in the country with 28.8 people dying of the disease per 100,000 of population.

The report also showed that patients in the Thames Valley area lived for longer after diagnosis than anywhere else in the country, with people treated there surviving on average for 224 days — the equivalent of about seven-and-a-half months.

Nationally, the average number of days a lung cancer patient lived after diagnosis was just 188.5.