10:43am Wednesday 2nd December 2009
By Barry Nelson
THE region has some of the best breast cancer survival rates in the country, according to a Department of Health report.
But the region does not fare so well in terms of surviving bowel and lung cancers.
The second annual cancer reform strategy showed that sufferers in some parts of the country have significantly less chance of survival than others living elsewhere.
For example, a patient with breast cancer in Torbay, in the South West, had a 99 per cent chance of being alive one year after diagnosis, compared with only 89 per cent in Tower Hamlets, a deprived area of inner London.
But in the North-East and North Yorkshire, every primary care trust (PCT) featured in the top quarter of England’s PCTs in terms of the proportion of breast cancer patients surviving one year after diagnosis.
Percentages ranged from 97.9 per cent in Darlington to 94.8 per cent in North Tyneside.
Patients in North Yorkshire had a 96.9 per cent chance of surviving for a year after diagnosis of breast cancer.
For bowel cancer, Telford, in Shropshire, headed the league table with 80 per cent surviving for a year after diagnosis, compared with only 57.9 per cent in Waltham Forest, Greater London.
The international good practice level for bowel cancer survivability is 79 per cent.
Only four out of 12 North- East PCTs had bowel cancer survival scores in the top quarter in England – North Tees and Northumberland, both with 75 per cent survivability, Darlington (73.7 per cent) and Middlesbrough (73.4 per cent).
Hartlepool (65.9 per cent) and County Durham (65.4 per cent) had survival scores for bowel cancer that put them in the lowest quarter of PCTs.
In a separate document, The National Lung Cancer Audit Report 2009, showed that the likelihood of getting active treatment – surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy – for lung cancer can be more than eight times higher in some places than in others.
Nationally, an average of 54 per cent of patients received active treatment for their lung cancer – up from 51 per cent in 2007.
In the North-East, the proportion of patients receiving active treatment ranged from Sunderland (47 per cent) to North Tees and Hartlepool (61 per cent).
In North Yorkshire, the proportion of patients receiving active treatment ranged from York (54 per cent) to Scarborough (60 per cent).
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