Cancer: Diagnosis
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of an alternative to staging when measuring early diagnosis for (a) blood cancers and (b) other unstageable cancers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton
There are no current plans to introduce a specific proxy staging measure or a corresponding national target to support the earlier diagnosis of blood cancers. To tackle late diagnoses of blood cancers, the National Health Service is implementing non-specific symptom pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. Blood cancers are one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including blood cancer, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes. We will get the NHS diagnosing blood cancer earlier and treating it faster, and we will support the NHS to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment, including for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those with blood cancer and other cancers with lower survival rates.
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