Postcode can boost odds of beating cancer by 66%

SERIOUS failings in NHS care mean patients’ chances of surviving cancer can be two- thirds higher depending on where they live, figures reveal.

Experts said the differences were ‘shocking’ and ‘unacceptable’ and were undoubtedly leading to hundreds of needless deaths.

The huge variation is caused by a variety of factors including GPs at some surgeries missing symptoms, long waits for hospital scans and tests and patients not being offered the most effective new treatments.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that only 7.2 per cent of women with lung cancer in Surrey and Sussex can expect to live for five years compared with 12.1 per cent in East Anglia.

This means that the survival odds are more than two thirds higher in East Anglia compared with Surrey and Sussex.

In Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, 70.9 per cent of men with prostate cancer survive for five or more years but in Birmingham and the Black Country it is 86.3 per cent. This means that the odds of surviving prostate cancer are a fifth higher for men in Birmingham and the Black Country.

For cervical cancer – which mainly affects young women – five-year survival rates are 54.5 per cent in Essex but 74.5 per cent in Durham, Darlington and Tees. This means a woman’s chance of surviving are more than a third higher compared with Essex.

Duleep Allirajah, of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: ‘These statistics highlight an alarming and unacceptable variation in cancer survival rates across the country.

‘For three of the most common cancers geographical differences could mean that hundreds of people are dying needlessly. Delays in diagnosis and unequal access to treatment are likely to be contrib- uting to this inexcusable postcode lottery which is costing lives.’

The differences may partly be because GPs in some areas are better at diagnosing certain cancers than in others. Often the symptoms are not obvious and include weight loss, abdominal pain or tiredness, which can easily be confused with other less serious illnesses.

And some hospitals have very long waits for scans, blood tests and X-rays, which add further delays to the diagnosis.

There is also evidence that doc- tors in some hospitals are reluctant to use the newest, most effective forms of surgery or drugs.

The figures looked at patients diagnosed between 2006 and 2008 who were still alive in 2013. Overall, survival rates had increased compared with four years before.

The figures also show that children with cancer in England have a better chance of living for at least five years than ever before.

For all childhood cancers combined, children aged up to 14 diagnosed in 2008 had an 84.2 per cent chance of surviving for five years after diagnosis. In 1990 they had only a 67.4 per cent chance.

Sean Duffy, national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, said: ‘ These statistics look at patients diagnosed with cancer over six years ago.

‘More children than ever before are surviving cancer.To take a fresh look at how we can do even better for all cancer patients we’ve established an independent taskforce to develop a new five-year strategy led by Cancer Research UK.’