Published on 4 January 2023
The BBC has highlighted a lung health check scheme funded through Cheshire & Merseyside Cancer Alliance.
The checks are now starting to be carried out in St Helens and south Sefton on people aged between 55 and 74 and having a history of smoking.
BBC North West News has featured the story of sisters Cathy and Norma, from Merseyside, who were given lung cancer diagnoses after having a check in the previous round of the scheme in Knowsley, Warrington and Halton. Cathy is now cancer free after treatment but Norma is living with the disease after clinicians found it was incurable.
BBC reporter Mairead Smyth spoke to them and they urged people invited for the test to book an appointment.
Cathy, who had no symptoms before her check which found the cancer, said: “I’m one of the lucky ones. It is silent, you would not know you had it until you had symptoms and it would possibly be too late.”
Those invited to have a check are given an appointment to speak to a nurse with expertise in lung cancer and other diseases. They may then be recommended to have a scan in a mobile NHS scanning unit, which is visiting St Helens and south Sefton for the next 18 months.
The BBC report featured Ronnie Lyon, who lives in St Helens and visited the mobile scanner in the town centre for his test. It is currently on the car park of Mecca Bingo.
He told Mairead: “I’ve got to an age now when I think I need to know whether there is anything wrong. With my lungs or anything else. And that is why I’ve come.”
The report also featured Dr Martin Ledson, Clinical Lead for respiratory medicine at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital and part of the team organising the lung health checks in Cheshire and Merseyside.
He told Mairead that the lung health checks are saving lives. He said: “Most people with lung cancer, by the time is diagnosed it is too late and it cannot be cured. So this process we are running now is really, really good. 80% of the lung cancers it finds can be cured.”
Cathy added: “I would advise anybody to go because I really think they saved my life. Because I really didn’t have any symptoms.”
You can watch the BBC report here: https://youtu.be/8bTW2x_rROo
