Lung cancer's prevalence over the years may have decreased in the United Kingdom, but still the numbers are high. In 2011 alone, more than 42,000 people were diagnosed, roughly 120 new cases every single day. It's one of the top 3 deadliest cancers in both men and women. Making things worse is the fact that usually its diagnosis is already too late, causing it to have one of the poorest prognosis of all types of cancer. Less than 15% can get past 5-year median survival rate.
This data is further supported by a recent study conducted by a respiratory physician, which was later published in Thorax, but it turns out the reason may lie on the doctor.
Nottingham University with Dr. Emma O'Dowd as the lead studied more than 20,000 lung cancer cases that occurred within 13 years from 2000. These cases were also gathered from over 400 GP surgeries.
Based on their analysis, about 6,000 of these patients died within 3 months after their first diagnosis, of which around 10% didn't make it to the second month. Meanwhile, about 5% of those who died didn't even know they had cancer in the first place. The disease may have been discovered by families upon seeing the death certificate.
But what's really interesting about this study is the fact that it puts the burden on the family doctors, who tend to fail to recognize lung cancer especially during the early stages, which could have increased the patients' chance of survival-even if the patient has gone back and forth for the same problem.
There are a couple of possible reasons for the failure. First, the doctors may confuse the usually broad and vague symptoms of lung cancer such as persistent cough to other respiratory diseases including smoker's cough.
Others didn't recommend an X-ray test, a procedure that allowed some lung cancer patients in the study to live longer than those who didn't get one.
Nevertheless, the goal of the study isn't to lay blame on these doctors but to provide them with more comprehensive tools and information that can improve their diagnosis of such cancer while in its earliest stages.
