How scan at supermarket can help to beat cancer

PATIENTS are being offered cancer scans in supermarket car parks to try to improve disease detection rates.

The scheme is going nationwide after a trial led to a four-fold rise in the number of lung cancers diagnosed early.

NHS chiefs judged it so successful they will pay for more trucks with scanners to be sited at branches of Tesco and Asda.

High-risk patients aged 55 to 75 who smoke or have been smokers are sent letters urging them to be checked out at one of the stores.

‘The rollout of this scheme is welcome news,’ said Nick Hopkinson, medical adviser to the British Lung Foundation.

‘By the time lung cancer causes symptoms it is usually too late for it to be cured. Screening tests mean that it can be picked up at a much earlier stage.’

Only one in ten patients is still alive five years after their diagnosis. This is because the illness has usually spread to other organs before it is spotted.

There are 46,400 cases of lung cancer in Britain each year and 16,300 deaths.

The store scans have been piloted in three deprived areas of Greater Manchester. The extra funding will see similar projects in London, Hull, Cumbria and at further Manchester sites.

Before the scheme started in June last year fewer than 20 per cent of patients had their cancer detected early.

The figure for early detection subsequently rose to more than 80 per cent.