London: Nearly 10,000 cancer patients
needlessly die every year in Britain due to of late diagnosis,
an official report has said.
The figure is double the earlier estimate of 5,000
fatalities, according to the report by the government`s
director of cancer services.
Professor Mike Richards, who prepared the report, revised
the estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the
disease -- lung, bowel and breast cancer -- that together
kill almost 63,000 people a year in UK, The Guardian reported.
Early detection of symptoms can save between 5,000 and
10,000 lives every year, the report said.
Richards analysed one-year survival rates for the three
cancers in England and compared them with those in other
European countries in the late 1990s.
He found that "late diagnosis was almost certainly a
major contributor to poor survival in England for all three
cancers" and that about half of all the deaths could have been
avoided if diagnosis was as good as the best-performing
European countries.
Low rates of surgical intervention being received by
cancer patients was another key reason for poor survival rates
in the UK.
"These delays in patients presenting with symptoms and
cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably cost lives.
The situation is unacceptable," Richards said.
PTI
