Failure to pick up cancer at an early stage costs the lives of up to 10,000 a year in England, the government's cancer tsar is reported to have said.Source: BBC.
The Guardian quotes National Cancer Director Professor Mike Richards as saying the situation is "unacceptable". Currently, 90% of patients are diagnosed by symptoms, rather than through screening. Professor Richards' comments will feature in a forthcoming article in the British Journal of Cancer.
In an excerpt published in the Guardian, Professor Richards said: "These delays in the patient presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably costs lives. The situation is unacceptable so the first big step has been to understand why the delays occur."
Professor Richards said that if diagnosis in England was as good as in the best-performing European countries many lives could be saved...
Monday, 30 November 2009
Late cancer diagnosis 'costs up to 10,000 lives a year'
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It shouldn't come as a surprise really should it, the same thing happened to "M" back in 2004, when it took the Senior Surgical Consultant seven months to diagnose recurrent bowel cancer which was inoperable by then, and she was in hospital.
So god knows what chance patients have under the "two week " rule.
The target culture of the NHS has killed and is still killing thousands of patients, the only people to gain are the senior management of the almost now discredited "Foundation Trusts" the rest of us are left to die while they can afford private treatment, check ups and diagnostics.
Same old same old I'm afraid.
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