Nearly a Quarter of Cancers Undetected until Emergency Admission
November 17, 2010
Posted by:Suzanne Trask
Figures show 'alarmingly high' number of patients only diagnosed with cancer when admitted to hospital in emergency. Nearly a quarter of all cancer cases in England went undetected until patients were admitted to hospital in an emergency, according to a study.
Figures from the National Cancer Intelligence Network research were worse for sufferers of acute leukaemia and brain cancer. More than half were discovered at a critical stage.
Pensioners and those under 25 were most likely to be diagnosed with cancer during emergency procedures, while those on low incomes were more likely to suffer from late detection than those who were well off.
The study by NCIN found that people whose cancer was detected at an emergency stage were more likely to be die within a year than those whose illness was discovered earlier. It was compiled by examining all patients diagnosed with cancer in England in 2007 and examining at what stage it was diagnosed.
The NCIN, an initiative working to improve standards of care, found a huge disparity between different cancer types, with only 3% of skin cancer cases going undetected until an emergency stage, compared with 58% of brain cancers.
Breast cancer was the most common cancer type, representing 13% of the 225,965 diagnoses made in 2007. The number of cancer diagnoses being made on the basis of emergency presentations was described by Cancer Research UK as "alarmingly high". This statistic may help to explain why we have lower survival rates than other countries in Europe.