UPDATE - Issue 20 - Winter 2004
Health Service Progress Report
The Department of Health published a 46-page report - Making Progress on Prostate Cancer last November The Minister responsible, John Reid, pointed out that prostate cancer is the only cancer with a government spending target for research, (currently running at £4.2 million per year, up from under £1 million when we started campaigning five years ago) All GPs now have a resource pack to help them counsel men worried about prostate cancer We are told that 98.7% of patients with suspected prostate cancer see a consultant within two weeks of urgent GP referral and the number of consultant urologists has risen by 40% to over 500 since 1997
The cancer Tsar, Mike Richards, announced that the number of new cases is rising rapidly (over 35% in the last 5 years) Much of this is due to the more widespread use of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) testing, although ageing of the population is also another factor, as prostate cancer is more common in older men The incidence is set to rise further in coming years Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in men, with 26,027 new cases diagnosed in England alone in 2001 Five-year survival rates improved from around 42% in the late 1980s to 68% in the late 1990s, due in part to the effects of increased PSA testing and earlier detection The proportion of tumours diagnosed at an early stage (stages I and II) rose from 52 per cent in 1999 to 60 per cent in 2002
Over the past four years there have been some encouraging increases in the provision of scanning equipment which should provide a further 240,000 CT scans, and 175,000 extra MRI scans each year. The machines will provide the latest imaging technology for cancer patients and give radiologists improved diagnostic confidence when reading the scans
Looking ahead the report announced that by the end of 2005 there should be a maximum two-month wait from urgent GP referral to treatment with a maximum one-month wait from diagnosis. All patients with urological cancers should be managed by multi- disciplinary teams
On the research front the trial comparing treatments for localised prostate cancer (ProtecT, see Update 19) has now been given an additional arm to give valuable data on prostate cancer screening Research carried out recently has identified the E2F3 gene that may give rise to a screening test for early aggressive cancers The Department's research portfolio also includes a study into the efficacy of High Intensity Focussed Ulrasound (reported on in this issue) Other studies include one to improve radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer by using magnetic resonance imaging for radiotherapy treatment planning, one to develop and validate a robotic system for prostate biopsy, and one to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy
A full copy of the report can be downloaded from http://www.dh.gov.uk/ and then specify the report's title