UK 'trailing other countries on cancer survival rates'

Published on Wednesday 16 July 2008 22:04

SURVIVAL rates from cancer in the UK, including Scotland, are significantly lower than other countries around the world, a study revealed yesterday.

The journal Lancet Oncology published the results of the first worldwide analysis of cancer survival rates, finding wide variations between countries.

The highest survival rates in the 31 nations studied were found in the United States, Japan and France, while the lowest were in countries such as Algeria, Slovakia and Poland.

The countries of the UK came in the bottom half of the table, but experts said many of the nations did not collect data as comprehensively as the UK, making comparisons misleading.

They also said that since the time the figures were collected – from patients diagnosed in 1990-94 and followed up to 1999 – treatments had vastly improved and more recent data would reveal more favourable results for the UK.

The figures for breast cancer showed Scotland ranked 21st in the countries studied with a five-year survival rate of 70.6 per cent – compared to more than 80 per cent in the US and Canada.

On prostate cancer, Scotland came 17th with a five-year survival of 54.2 per cent, compared to more than 90 per cent in the US. But while the UK collects figures on all cancer patients, the US collects data for less than half, while France collects data for just over 5 per cent.

Professor Michel Coleman, lead researcher from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the study showed wide differences between countries, and also between black and white people in the US.

He added: "Most of the wide variation in survival is likely due to differences in access to diagnostic and treatment services, and factors such as tumour biology, state at diagnosis or compliance with treatment."

Lesley Walker, from Cancer Research UK, said some of the data used in the study was almost two decades old and the "use of more recent data would mean the gap (between Britain and other countries] is closed significantly".