Abstract

Introduction: National cancer awareness campaigns have previously resulted in an increased number of referrals from primary care. They have not had an impact on early cancer diagnoses or survival. We present a comparison of demographic and epidemiological characteristics of patients from East Cheshire before and after the national lung cancer awareness campaign in 2012. Methods: A 3 month period between May and August 2012 was selected that coincided with the national campaign. A comparative period in 2011 was selected as control. Demographic and clinical information was collected from lung cancer audit data, clinic letters and radiology. Chi-squared test was used to compare the groups. Results: There was a 50% increase in referrals in 2012. The table shows comparative data between the two periods. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of males referred to the service in 2012 (p = 0.009). There was no difference between the two groups in terms of age, smoking status, duration of symptoms or A&E attendances. More patients were referred through their GP and avoided presentation to A&E in 2012 but this was not statistically significant. There was an insignificant trend to increased number of patients with performance status 3 4 in 2012. Although histology was obtained in fewer cases in 2012 following the awareness programme, more patients were offered curative treatment. Conclusions and discussion: There was a significant increase in the male-female ratio in our cohort in the 3 month period following the national awareness campaign. Whether this is coincidental or truly linked to the effect of media/publicity on males is not known. Analysis of the entire year’s data might elucidate things further. The aim of any cancer screening programme is to pick up early disease and influence mortality. This has not been demonstrated in our cohort. The proportion of patients presenting with a short duration of symptoms was similar in both groups. Curative treatment was offered more frequently in 2012 despite a larger proportion of patients with poor performance status.

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