GPs urged in UK to be more alert in diagnosing lung cancer in smokers

Charities launch campaign to prompt family doctors not to neglect UK’s eighth deadliest cancer

May 2, 2021 –Denis Campbell, Health Policy Editor, The Guardian

Cancer charities are urging general practitioners (GPs) to save lives by getting better at spotting the symptoms of one of Britain’s most lethal forms of the disease – lung cancer in non-smokers.

Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK are among the groups to back a new campaign that launches this week intended to prompt family doctors to consider lung cancer as a likely diagnosis even in people who have never smoked.

Lung cancer is closely linked to smoking, but around 6,000 non-smokers a year die of it, more than the death toll of 5,300 from cervical cancer, 4,500 from leukemia and 4,200 from ovarian cancer. It is the UK’s eighth biggest cancer killer and the seventh commonest cause of cancer death worldwide.

Sufferers often visit their GP several times before being referred to hospital and diagnosed, by which time most are too late to undergo treatment that may cure them. Doctors are puzzled by why those who do not use cigarettes contract the “smokers’ disease”. They believe genetic factors and growing up in a household where one or both parents smoke are among the reasons.

“Lung cancer in never-smokers can be challenging to diagnose, but the incidence of lung cancer in people who have never smoked is increasing and the fact that so many are diagnosed with late-stage disease suggest that it is under-recognized by GPs”, said Jenny Abbott, the chair of EGFR Positive UK, one of the three lung-cancer charities behind the campaign. Read More

Source: The Guardian