Published on 28 June 2023
A cancer screening initiative which originated in Merseyside is to be rolled out across the country after it has been found to save lives.
The Targeted Lung Health Check programme, which can find lung cancer sooner, often before symptoms appear, will be rolled out nationally after successful pilot projects, including in Cheshire and Merseyside.
Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance has been working with local NHS organisations to run the checks in Liverpool, Halton, Knowsley, St Helens and south Sefton for a number of years. This week, the Government announced it will now become a national screening programme.
Each year the programme – which will cost £270 million annually once fully implemented - is expected to detect as many as 9,000 people with cancer, deliver almost one million scans and provide treatment earlier.
The rollout follows a successful opening phase where approximately 70% of the screening took place in mobile units parked in convenient places - such as supermarket car parks - to ensure easy access and focused on more deprived areas where people are four times more likely to smoke.
The programme, backed by a recommendation from the UK National Screening Committee - will use patient’s GP records for those aged 55 to 74 to identify current or former smokers. Patients will have their risk of cancer assessed based on their smoking history and other factors and those considered high risk will be invited for specialist scans every two years.
The lung health checks were pioneering in Merseyside, when in 1993 the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation awarded a grant to Professor John Field to study genetic changes in lung cancer. This work formed the basis for the Liverpool Lung Project (LLP) and the development of the LLP risk model to help identify individuals at high risk of developing lung cancer.
Professor Field went on to lead the UK Lung Cancer Screening Trial (UKLS), the UK’s first lung cancer CT screening trial at the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital and Royal Papworth Hospital.
Results from the UKLS trial demonstrated the life-saving potential and financial feasibility of a programme of lung screening; prompting the UK’s first lung screening pilot in Liverpool, where there is a disproportionately high incidence of lung cancer.
Launched in 2016, the Liverpool Healthy Lung Project received an investment of £3m from the NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to tackle local health inequality.
This project was then taken up in areas of greatest need across the country, and was extended locally to Halton and Knowsley, with a further extension to south Sefton and St Helens starting late last year, funded by Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance.
Paula Chadwick, chief executive of Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, is delighted by the announcement: “This is the day we truly begin to level up the lung cancer playing field. Lung cancer screening allows us to get ahead of this awful disease, catching it at the earliest opportunity – often before symptoms even start – and treating it with an aim to cure.
“Through the success of NHS England’s targeted lung health check programme, we have been able to detect over three quarters of cancers at stages one and two, which turns current rates on their head. Now, with this announcement, many more lives will be saved, making today a very good day in our mission to beat the UK’s biggest cancer killer.”
John Hayes, Managing Director of Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, said: “It is fantastic news that the successful TLHC programme is now going to benefit people right across the country. We have been proud to play a part in giving people at risk of lung cancer in our area an opportunity to have these important checks.
“The NHS lung trucks programme is already delivering life-changing results, with people living in some of the most deprived areas of Cheshire and Merseyside now more likely to be diagnosed at an earlier stage, giving them a better chance of successful treatment.”
The first phase of the national scheme will reach 40% of the eligible population by March 2025 with the aim of 100% coverage by March 2030 following the rollout which will also help support the government objective for England to be smoke free by 2030.