Britain’s survival rates for six of the deadliest cancers lag woefully behind other high-income countries, shocking data has revealed.
The Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, a coalition of cancer charities, found that Britain had one of the lowest five-year survival rates for cancers classified as ‘less survivable’.
Only 16 percent of Brits diagnosed with one of these forms of the disease – lungs, liver, brain, oesophagus, pancreas and stomach – live an average of five years.
Experts blamed delays in diagnosis and slow access to treatment and urged the government to commit to improving treatment options.
Many patients with a lower chance of surviving cancer will only be diagnosed following an emergency admission to hospital or an urgent GP referral after symptoms have become severe, at which point the disease becomes more difficult to treat, making the chances of survival poor.
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The data, based on research published by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, tracked survival rates in 29 countries from 2010 to 2013.
Analysis by the taskforce found that Britain ranks 27th for lung cancer, with only 13.3 percent of patients living five years after diagnosis.
By comparison, this figure is almost twice as high in Korea (25.1 percent), which performs best in lung, esophageal and stomach cancer.
Britain came in 26th for stomach cancer, with only 20.7 percent of patients seeing cancer within the fifth year after diagnosis. In Korea, this figure was 68.9 percent.
For pancreatic cancer, Britain ranked 25th (6.8 percent) and 22nd for brain (26.3 percent).
Out of 29 countries, the country also ranked 21st and 14th for liver and esophageal cancer respectively (13 percent and 15.7 percent).
The countries with the highest five-year survival rates for these cancers were Korea, Belgium, the US, Australia and China.
The task force also estimated that if survival rates in Britain were comparable to those of patients in these countries, 8,000 lives could be saved every year.
Currently, just over 15,000 people in Britain will survive five years after being diagnosed with a less survivable form of cancer. If the British had a figure comparable to the top five, this number could be over 23,000.
More than 90,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with these five cancers each year, leading to more than 67,000 deaths each year – around half of all cancer deaths.
In the US, 475,000 people will be told every year that they have a reduced chance of survival, while more than 250,000 people will die from it.
The taskforce consists of Pancreatic Cancer UK, Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, The Brain Tumor Charity, Action Against Heartburn, Guts UK and the British Liver Trust.
Only 16 percent of Brits survive an average of five years after being diagnosed with cancer. The task force aims to increase this to 28 percent by 2029.
Anna Jewell, chair of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, said: ‘People who have been diagnosed with a lower survival rate are already fighting the odds to survive.
‘The figures we share today show that people living in Britain have even worse prospects than people living in comparable countries.
“We can see from these statistics that if we could bring the survival rates of these cancers to the same level as those of the best-performing countries in the world, we could give thousands of patients valuable years.”
She added: ‘If we want to see positive and meaningful change, all UK governments must commit to proactively investing in research and putting processes in place so we can speed up diagnosis and improve treatment options.’
Experts believe delays in diagnosis and slow access to treatment are behind the deadly difference in survival rates in Britain.
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According to Pancreatic Cancer UK, around 70 percent of pancreatic cancer patients in Britain receive no treatment at all.
Only one in ten undergo surgery – the only potentially curative treatment.
Surgery is the first treatment for most cancers, although this is usually only an option if the tumor is caught early. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the two other most recommended treatments.
But in England, only 65 percent of people with a cancerous brain tumor are treated with one of the three methods. By comparison, around 85 percent of breast cancer patients undergo this treatment, NHS data shows.
It comes after MPs heard this week that delays in lung cancer diagnosis mean some patients are no longer eligible for advanced treatments that could extend their survival from months to years.
Professor David Baldwin, a pulmonologist and honorary professor of medicine at the University of Nottingham, told the Health and Social Care Committee on Tuesday: ‘Unless you get an earlier and quicker diagnosis, the great treatments that are now available… are those treatments not that. equally effective and sometimes cannot be given at all.
‘So if we have a delay in getting a diagnosis to a patient, and their health has deteriorated so much because of that delay – and there are all kinds of reasons for those delays – then they can’t get the treatment, because if they… treatment, it does more harm than good.’
He added: ‘Now I see this all the time in my clinical practice, it’s very distressing when we now have a treatment that allows people to survive for years – it used to be just months, the story has changed, if they their treatment takes years – and they can’t get it because they’re not fit enough or because you’ve seen them deteriorate over time.’
Since 2020/21, early cancer diagnosis has been one of three priority areas for primary care networks, which see local GP practices working together with community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospitals and voluntary services.
The NHS Long Term Plan, published in 2019, states that 75 percent of people with cancer should be diagnosed early, at stage one or two, by 2028.
But cancer care effectively came to a standstill for some patients when the pandemic first reached British shores, with appointments canceled and diagnostic scans postponed due to the government’s commitment to protecting the NHS.
Experts estimate that 40,000 cases of cancer went undiagnosed in the first year of the pandemic alone.
NHS cancer services are also repeatedly failing to meet their targets.
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While the level of progress in cancer survival has been rapid in some forms of the disease, such as breast and prostate cancer, others, such as lung and pancreas, have improved only at a snail’s pace.
Official data from health services for October on cancer waiting times shows that only seven in ten (71 percent) of patients urgently referred for suspected cancer were diagnosed or ruled out with cancer within 28 days. The goal is 75 percent.
Only 89.4 percent wait a month or less before starting their first cancer treatment after deciding to proceed with surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The target is 96 percent, but this has never been achieved.
Less than two-thirds (63.1 percent) of patients started their first cancer treatment within two months of an urgent referral.
According to NHS guidelines, 85 percent of cancer patients should be treated within this time frame. But this goal was never achieved.
Tory MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer, Elliot Colburn, said: ‘Less survivable cancers deserve special and urgent attention because of the very serious consequences that people who are diagnosed with them often face.
‘If we want to deliver world-class care to cancer patients in the UK, we must bring ourselves to the same level as other countries when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of less survivable cancers.
“I fully support Less Survivable Cancers Awareness Day and everyone working to improve outcomes for people diagnosed with these devastating cancers.”