Everyone who has ever smoked in England is to be offered lung screening in middle age under plans to detect and treat cancer earlier.
Lung cancer kills about 35,000 people every year, and is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, accounting for one in five. It also has one of the worst cancer survival rates, which is largely attributed to diagnoses at a late stage when treatment is less likely to be effective.
Millions of people will be invited for lung checks in an effort to improve survival rates. About a million screenings of people aged 55 to 74 will be carried out every year under the programme.
It follows a successful pilot of the scheme in deprived areas of the country where people are four times more likely to smoke. It resulted in more than 2,000 people being detected as having cancer, 76% of them at an earlier stage compared with 29% outside the programme in 2019.
“Identifying lung cancer early saves lives, and the expansion of the NHS’s targeted lung health check programme is another landmark step forward in our drive to find and treat more people living with this devastating disease at the earliest stage,” said the chief executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard.
Issuing a direct plea to those to be offered the checks, she said: “If you receive an invitation, please do take it up, and if you are worried about a possible symptom of cancer, please come forward to your GP. Getting checked could save your life.”
The lung cancers of about 9,000 people a year could be caught sooner under the scheme. It will cost £270m a year, and will look at GP records to identify current or ex-smokers.
Backed by a recommendation from the UK national screening committee, patients will have their risk of cancer assessed based on their smoking history and other factors. Those considered high risk will be invited for specialist scans every two years.
The rollout is expected to mean 325,000 people will become eligible for a first scan each year, with 992,000 scans a year in total.
The first phase of the scheme will reach 40% of the eligible population by March 2025, officials said, with 100% coverage by March 2030.
The rollout comes after a pilot in which about 70% of screenings took place in mobile units parked in sites such as supermarket car parks, which enabled easy and convenient patient access.
“Through our screening programme we are now seeing more diagnoses at stage 1 and stage 2 in the most deprived communities, which is both a positive step and a practical example of how we are reducing health inequalities,” the health secretary, Steve Barclay, said.
“Rolling this out further will prolong lives by catching cancer earlier and reducing the levels of treatment required not just benefiting the patient but others waiting for treatment.”
Anyone assessed as being at high risk of lung cancer will be referred to have a low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scan, with a diagnosis and treatment to follow if needed.
Those whose scans are negative will be invited for further scans every 24 months until they pass the upper age limit.
The government said more radiographers would be appointed, but did not explain where the extra staff would come from. The NHS long-term workforce plan, which ministers have repeatedly promised but then delayed, is finally expected to be published this week.
The chief executive of Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, Paula Chadwick, welcomed the rollout. Screening “allows us to get ahead of this awful disease for the first time, catching it at the earliest opportunity, often before symptoms even start, and treating it with an aim to cure.”
