Posted on 02/28/2013 11:36:28 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Women in Britain are dying quicker of breast cancer than in comparable countries, even though they are being diagnosed at the same time, suggesting care on the NHS is not as good as it is elsewhere.
Academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the proportion of women in the UK surviving at least three years after being diagnosed was 87 to 89 percent, which was similar to Denmark.
In Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden three-year survival was 91 to 94 per cent for the period examined, between 2000 and 2007.
Britain’s breast cancer survival rates have started to catch up those in these other leading nations in recent years.
It has been thought that the remaining gap was due in large part to women here being diagnosed later, rather than poorer treatment. That could be due to women failing to recognise possible symptoms, or being reluctant to confront its possibility.
But these findings, published in the British Journal of Cancer, cast doubt on that theory.
They showed that women in Britain were just as likely to be diagnosed at an early stage in the UK as in the four countries with better survival rates.
The figures also showed wide variations is three-year survival for those whose cancer was only picked up when it had spread extensively throughout the body.
In Britain only 28 per cent made it to three years, but in Sweden 42 per cent did.
The figures are based on data from 257,362 women followed by the highly regarded International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership.
Dr Sarah Walters, lead author, said: “We should now investigate
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Unfortunate news given the progress made on this front.
Twenty years ago a Brit told me, “If you have a suspicious lump or something serious, you get on a plane and fly to the United States where you can have it looked at the next day. If you stay and let the public health service grind its ponderous gears by the time you get seen you might be terminal.”
We’re headed where they are now. Meanwhile, the only successful (in terms of treatment) medical ventures in the UK are privatized former NHS hospitals.
Does anyone know the rate of breast cancer in 3rd world countries?
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