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Abstract: Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programmes using a guaiac faecal occult blood test (gFOBt) reduce CRC mortality. Interval cancers are diagnosed between screening rounds: reassurance from a negative gFOBt has the potential to influence the pathway to diagnosis of an interval colorectal cancer. Methods: Twenty‐six semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews were carried out in Scotland and England, with individuals diagnosed with an interval colorectal cancer following a negative gFOBt result. Results: Participants reported they were reassured by a negative gFOBt, interpreting their result as an “all clear”. Therefore, most did not suspect cancer as a possible cause of symptoms and many did not recall their screening result during symptom appraisal. Among those who did consider cancer, and did think about their screening test result, reassurance from a negative gFOBt led some to “downplay” the seriousness of their symptoms with some interviewees explicitly stating that their negative test result contributed to a delayed decision to seek help. Conclusion: Screening participants need to be informed of the limitations of screening and the ongoing risk of developing colorectal cancer even when in receipt of a negative result: the importance of minimizing delay in seeking medical advice for colorectal symptoms should be emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Lung cancer outcomes in England are inferior to comparable countries. Patient or disease characteristics, healthcare-seeking behaviour, diagnostic pathways, and oncology service provision may contribute. We aimed to quantify associations between geographic variations in treatment and survival of patients in England.Methods: We retrieved detailed cancer registration data to analyse the variation in survival of 176,225 lung cancer patients, diagnosed 2010-2014. We used Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression to investigate survival in the two-year period following diagnosis.Results: Survival improved over the period studied. The use of active treatment varied between geographical areas, with inter-quintile ranges of 9%-17% for surgical resection, 4%-13% for radical radiotherapy, and 22%-35% for chemotherapy. At 2 years, there were 188 potentially avoidable deaths annually for surgical resection, and 373 for radical radiotherapy, if all treated proportions were the same as in the highest quintiles. At the 6 month time-point, 318 deaths per year could be postponed if chemotherapy use for all patients was as in the highest quintile. The results were robust to statistical adjustments for age, sex, socio-economic status, performance status and co-morbidity.Conclusion: The extent of use of different treatment modalities varies between geographical areas in England. These variations are not attributable to measurable patient and tumour characteristics, and more likely reflect differences in clinical management between local multi-disciplinary teams. The data suggest improvement over time, but there is potential for further survival gains if the use of active treatments in all areas could be increased towards the highest current regional rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is debated whether treating cancer patients in high-volume surgical centres can lead to improvement in outcomes, such as shorter length of hospital stay, decreased frequency and severity of post-operative complications, decreased re-admission, and decreased mortality. The dataset for this analysis was based on cancer registration and hospital discharge data and comprised information on 15,738 non-small-cell lung cancer patients resident and diagnosed in England in 2006–2010 and treated by surgical resection. The number of lung cancer resections was computed for each hospital in each calendar year, and patients were assigned to a hospital volume quintile on the basis of the volume of their hospital. Hospitals with large lung cancer surgical resection volumes were less restrictive in their selection of patients for surgical management and provided a higher resection rate to their geographical population. Higher volume hospitals had shorter length of stay and the odds of re-admission were 15% lower in the highest hospital volume quintile compared with the lowest quintile. Mortality risks were 1% after 30 d and 3% after 90 d. Patients from hospitals in the highest volume quintile had about half the odds of death within 30 d than patients from the lowest quintile. Variations in outcomes were generally small, but in the same direction, with consistently better outcomes in the larger hospitals. This gives support to the ongoing trend towards centralisation of clinical services, but service re-organisation needs to take account of not only the size of hospitals but also referral routes and patient access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the re-organisation of cancer registration in England in 2012, a high priority was given to the recording of cancer stage and other prognostic clinical data items., Methods: We extracted 86 852 breast cancer records for women resident in England and diagnosed during 2012-2013. Information on age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, comorbidity, tumour stage, grade, morphology and oestrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptor status was included. The two-year cumulative risk of death from any cause was estimated with the Kaplan-Meier method, and univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). The follow-up ended on 31 December 2014., Results: The completeness of registration for prognostic variables was generally high (around 80% or higher), but it was low for progesterone receptor status (41%). Women with negative receptor status for each of the oestrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors (triple-negative cancers) had an adjusted HR for death of 2.00 (95%CI 1.84-2.17). Black women had an age-adjusted HR of 1.77 (1.48-2.13) compared with White women., Conclusions: The excess mortality of Black women with breast cancer has contributions from socio-economic factors, stage distribution and tumour biology. The study illustrates the richness of detail in the national cancer registration data. This allows for analysis of cancer outcomes at a high level of resolution, and may form the basis for risk stratification., Competing Interests: Katherine Henson has in the past been an employee of BUPA. Ruth Jack and Elizabeth Davies have received research funding for an unrelated project from Hospital Corporation of America International. All other authors declare no conflict of interest. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of CRUK, the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. The researchers were independent of the funders, and the researchers alone interpreted the data and decided to publish.

Objective: To assess the overall effect of the English urgent referral pathway on cancer survival., Setting: 8049 general practices in England., Design: Cohort study. Linked information from the national Cancer Waiting Times database, NHS Exeter database, and National Cancer Register was used to estimate mortality in patients in relation to the propensity of their general practice to use the urgent referral pathway., Participants: 215,284 patients with cancer, diagnosed or first treated in England in 2009 and followed up to 2013., Outcome Measure: Hazard ratios for death from any cause, as estimated from a Cox proportional hazards regression., Results: During four years of follow-up, 91,620 deaths occurred, of which 51,606 (56%) occurred within the first year after diagnosis. Two measures of the propensity to use urgent referral, the standardised referral ratio and the detection rate, were associated with reduced mortality. The hazard ratio for the combination of high referral ratio and high detection rate was 0.96 (95% confidence interval 0.94 to 0.99), applying to 16% (n=34,758) of the study population. Patients with cancer who were registered with general practices with the lowest use of urgent referral had an excess mortality (hazard ratio 1.07 (95% confidence interval 1.05 to 1.08); 37% (n=79,416) of the study population). The comparator group for these two hazard ratios was the remaining 47% (n=101,110) of the study population. This result in mortality was consistent for different types of cancer (apart from breast cancer) and with other stratifications of the dataset, and was not sensitive to adjustment for potential confounders and other details of the statistical model., Conclusions: Use of the urgent referral pathway could be efficacious. General practices that consistently have a low propensity to use urgent referrals could consider increasing the use of this pathway to improve the survival of their patients with cancer., (© Møller et al 2015.)

Background: Survival rates following a diagnosis of cancer vary between countries. The International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP), a collaboration between six countries with primary care led health services, was set up in 2009 to investigate the causes of these differences. Module 3 of this collaboration hypothesised that an association exists between the readiness of primary care physicians (PCP) to investigate for cancer - the 'threshold' risk level at which they investigate or refer to a specialist for consideration of possible cancer - and survival for that cancer (lung, colorectal and ovarian). We describe the development of an international survey instrument to test this hypothesis., Methods: The work was led by an academic steering group in England. They agreed that an online survey was the most pragmatic way of identifying differences between the jurisdictions. Research questions were identified through clinical experience and expert knowledge of the relevant literature.A survey comprising a set of direct questions and five clinical scenarios was developed to investigate the hypothesis. The survey content was discussed and refined concurrently and repeatedly with international partners. The survey was validated using an iterative process in England. Following validation the survey was adapted to be relevant to the health systems operating in other jurisdictions and translated into Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and into Canadian and Australian English., Results: This work has produced a survey with face, content and cross cultural validity that will be circulated in all six countries. It could also form a benchmark for similar surveys in countries with similar health care systems., Conclusions: The vignettes could also be used as educational resources. This study is likely to impact on healthcare policy and practice in participating countries.

Introduction: Chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy is the recommended treatment for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), except in stage I disease where clinical guidelines state there may be a role for surgery based on favourable outcomes in case series. Evidence supporting adjuvant chemotherapy in resected SCLC is limited but this is widely offered., Methods: Data on 359 873 patients who were diagnosed with a first primary lung cancer in England between 1998 and 2009 were grouped according to histology (SCLC or non-SCLC (NSCLC)) and whether they underwent a surgical resection. We explored their survival using Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression, adjusting for age, sex, comorbidity and socioeconomic status., Results: The survival of 465 patients with resected SCLC was lower than patients with resected NSCLC (5-year survival 31% and 45%, respectively), but much higher than patients of either group who were not resected (3%). The difference between resected SCLC and NSCLC diminished with time after surgery. Survival was superior for the subgroup of 198 'elective' SCLC cases where the diagnosis was most likely known before resection than for the subgroup of 267 'incidental' cases where the SCLC diagnosis was likely to have been made after resection., Conclusions: These data serve as a natural experiment testing the survival after surgical management of SCLC according to NSCLC principles. Patients with SCLC treated surgically for early stage disease may have survival outcomes that approach those of NSCLC, supporting the emerging clinical practice of offering surgical resection to selected patients with SCLC.