A new tool could save lives by identifying those most at risk of developing lung cancer, according to research.
The CanPredict tool, developed by researchers from the University of Oxford and University of Nottingham, will be able to spot those most at risk of developing the disease over the next decade. This will in turn allow patients to be put forward for screening tests earlier
Lung cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed form of cancer in Scotland, according to the Scottish Public Health Observatory. In 2020, 2385 men and 2.548 women in Scotland were diagnosed with lung cancer and unfortunately the survival rate is poor, with just 11.1 per cent of men and 16.3 per cent of women living for more than five years following diagnosis.
However, early diagnosis has been shown to improve survival rates, with experts hopeful that early detection of risk using the new tool could save lives.
CanPredict was created and tested using the anonymised health records of more than 19 million adults across the UK
The researchers’ paper on “Predicting the future risk of lung cancer” was due to be published in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine on Wednesday.
Dr Weiqi Liao, lead author on the publication and a data scientist in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, said: “Our tool, CanPredict, works by examining existing patient health records, so it could be run on a per GP surgery basis or nationally, automatically and objectively prioritising patients and alerting their GPs that they might benefit from further screening.
“Because of this, CanPredict has the potential to substantially reduce the burden on NHS staff, saving time, money and streamlining the administrative process for better patient experience.”
The researcher explained that two separate sets of health records were used to develop the tool -the QResearch database and the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD).
She added: “Using the QResearch database – which, in total, contains the anonymised health records of over 35 million patients, spanning all ethnicities and social groups across the UK – to identify 13 million people aged between 25 to 84 among whom 73,380 had a diagnosis of lung cancer.
“They then looked back through their health records to identify common factors which might be used to statistically predict their risk of developing the cancer.”
There are various factors that can increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, including smoking, age, ethnicity, body mass index, medical conditions and social deprivation. These factors were considered as part of the analysis.
The tool was then tested using a separate set of anonymised health record from GP surgeries - the CPRD.
She added: “The researchers used the CPRD data, which contained data from an additional 2.54 million people’s anonymised health records, to see which people their new tool predicted were at the greatest risk of developing lung cancer, and then compared this to those who did go on to develop lung cancer.
“The new CanPredict tool correctly identified more people who went on to develop lung cancer and was more sensitive than current recommended methods of predicting risk, across five, six, and 10-year forecasts.”
Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, senior author and professor of clinical epidemiology and general practice at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, said: “Improving early diagnosis of lung cancer is incredibly important both for the NHS but especially for patients and their families.
“We hope that this new validated risk tool will help better prioritise patients for screening and ultimately help spot lung cancer earlier when treatments are more likely to help.
“We’d like to thank the many thousands of GPs who have shared anonymised data for research without whom this would not have been possible.”
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