Cancer Mortality

Yes cancer is predominantly a disease of old people - it's the accumulation of damage to their cells that probably makes them more vulnerable. So the longer the population live, the more cancers they will produce. Its about statistics, not individuals. Cancer research UK has excellent graphs showing incidence, mortality etc.
www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/

Cancer down to bad luck in some cases, a genetic disposition in a few and factors like smoking and alcohol in very many. Smoking is obviously the most risky thing you can do (other than working unprotected with radioactive materials). Lung cancer is on the rise in women as we heard the other day:
www.nhs.uk/news/2015/01January/Pages/Female-lung-cancer-deaths-may-outstrip-breast-cancer-in-2015.aspx

The idea of self referral is more than a bit crazy i think, given our useful system in the UK where GPs act as gatekeepers to filter the people that need to see a consultant. Typical headline grabbing daft idea in run up to election.
However you might make a case for one or two types of cancers - e.g. breast. If you have a definite lump in your breast you need to get it checked. But book-yourself-a-mammagram-online would have problems - for instance pre-menopausal breasts are rather opaque to x-rays and therefore a cancer can't be seen in younger women. And as we all know there are other signs of breast cancer...
There was another example last week when Public Health England were urging people with heartburn to see their doctors to get checked for cancer. Yes - long term acid reflux can cause cancer. (Putting out this press release in the middle of the peak season for flu must have really pleased the GPs. ) Imagine if everyone with heartburn referred themselves for endoscopy - those in genuine need would get stuck in a very, very long queue.
Crun the number of older people in a surgery is going to vary a great deal between retirement-belt areas and a place like Milton Keynes (at one time had the youngest population in Europe). Hence cancer rates and GP workloads will vary. Also poorer people are on average a darn sight sicker, sooner than richer people.
It is notoriously difficult to compare cancer outcomes between countries. This is because screening varies and so does diagnosis. Imagine 2 countries with identical prostate cancer rates. Country 1 has no screening, it is not even mentioned. Many old men have prostate cancer without knowing it and they die of other things quite often, before the cancer spreads. However in those where it does get beyond a certain point, it is quite hard to cure.
Country 2 is very busy screening and doing biopsies on a big percentage of men over 70. Lots of them are diagnosed as having prostate cancer and lots of them are pronounced "cured" because it is picked up early and dealt with.
In this particular instance we really don't know which of these two approaches would lead to fewer prostate-related deaths - in country 2 surgery might end up killing off quite a few that would have otherwise survived.
You cannot really compare these 2 countries and say that one has a better rate of cure or better diagnosis than the other.
Even something as simple as the way in which causes of death are captured on death statistics can make one country look different to another.

You're taking the piss mickey now!

Message deleted by Gransnet for breaking our forum guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

This is an interesting take on NHS statistics.

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/clinical/cancer/missed-cancer-targets-mark-of-success-insists-stevens/20009012.article

Quite a few doctors are puzzled by it, too.

"Doctors are now saying that cancer is not necessarily hereditary but mostly bad luck."

Radio 4 More or Less covered this last week, and the study didn't actually say that. The worlds leading experts can't agree on what the authors mean, so they are currently drafting another paper to clarify. Meanwhile there's no disagreement that the risk of the most common cancers can be reduced by lifestyle changes.

"Falcon while I agree you can't 'blame' it on an aging population, it is a fact that after a certain age can we rates do increase significantly and as we get older our bodies are more prone to the cells going a bit gaga."

The lifetime risk of developing cancer will be greater in an older population even without the annual risk increasing. Living to 100 instead of 50 is like driving 100 miles instead of 50, the risk will still increase even if the risk in the last year (or mile) is the same as the first. Living more years (or driving more miles) is like having more chances to draw the short straw.

I heard it was the shortage of qualified radiologists which were causing a delay in diagnosis. The radioligists job is to take the photos and a specalist for Internal medicine should make the diagnosis.
When we have colonoscopy in Germany it is the gastroenteroligist or similar who does the examination and after you have come round again after the light anaestheitic, you go into his office and he tells you.
If you only have doubtful looking polymps in the bowel wall he removes them and they are sent to a laboratory.
If he/she has found cancer then a biopsy will be taken.

For a smear test we go to a gynocologist who also does an internal examination of the womb and the ovaries and then an examination of the lower colon, an examination for swellings or lumps. Then she does manual tests of the breast and lymph areas. This is the basic yearly examination for every woman over 30.
I think that the NHS should spend more on training their doctors up to specialist level and let them be professionals with their own budget.

I never did think that cancer was hereditary - certain genes seem to predispose some people to cancer but I thought that it was basically a fault in the copying of DNA when cells divide and reproduce. Those cells divide hundreds - thousands? - of times, and Chinese Whisper Syndrome means that if a fault is not detected and seen off by the body's detective system, it is reproduced in all the subsequent divisions of that cell. It is known that some chemicals can affect the whole process, but not everything is known.

The fault can occur at any point in our lifetime, it is not just in older people. We are exposed to far more different chemicals and environments than we would have been a couple of hundred years ago, and we have far more sophisticated ways to detect cancers. Unless the tumour were obvious, someone who lost weight and died without the cause being known would once just have died of, say, a "wasting disease".

Anya is right. The apparent increase in the number of cancer cases has a lot to do with the increase in the numbers of people living longer.

Increased age itself seems to make it more likely that cancers will occur.

I'm doing some more family history recently and noticed that an awful lot of my ancestors around the mid 1800s died before they ever eached 60.

can we cancer grrrrrr...

Falcon while I agree you can't 'blame' it on an aging population, it is a fact that after a certain age can we rates do increase significantly and as we get older our bodies are more prone to the cells going a bit gaga.

We do badly in this country as many GPS are notoriously bad at diagnosing early cancers and we all know horror stories of friends and relatives who visited time and time again to be treate, for just one example, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, only to find out too late it was bowel cancer.

Doctors are now saying that cancer is not necessarily hereditary but mostly bad luck.

Cells divide all the time and they can go wrong. I'm just wondering why cancer is on the increase so much. It can't all be blamed on an aging generation because young people (tragically) get it as well.

Is it something in the atmosphere that wasn't there before, is it earlier detection, there must be a reason?

Jane sorry, it wasn't my intention to sound aggressive. Your argument rests on the assumption that better performing European countries don't also have ethnic minorities. Based on WHO mortality rates, and OECD Immigration stats, cancer mortality tends to be lower with higher immigration rates, but higher in Eastern Europe where many of the immigrants come from.

I haven't read your reference in detail, but it seems to make a lot of mention of potential ethnic differences, but not to actual mortality. (One of their references does acknowledge an ethnic difference in the American Medicare system, though.)

I am sorry to feel you seem too ready to listen to strangers or be influenced by what you may read on the Internet ethel, rather than your fellow Gransnetters. "Sitting in a semi circle with their vomit bowls" - I ask you, where do people get these ideas? I have never met someone so pessimistic and "glass half empty "! I know BC is not a walk in the park, but if you go into your treatment expecting the worse you will not give yourself a chance. Look at survival figures if you must consult statistics, listen to people who have " been there" and do not give in to these prejudices.

thank you all for your advice I will take a magazine or something, Im sure it will be ok, it has to be because I want to fight this thing
xx

I had the 'blood in the pee' almost four years ago, immediately referred by our gp, scans and biopsy then kidney cancer removed within a month. Cannot fault our practice personally. A friend, though, only in early 30s had a persistent cough and was sent away several times. She was diagnosed with lymphoma. Luckily it was treated with sessions of chemo. This was also almost 4 years ago. I think than patients should insist to be referred by their gp if they feel instinctively that something is seriously wrong.

elegran it was a complete stranger to me and before I had any tests.
I had no reason to disbelieve.
Anyway Im making no further comments about the subject as on another thread I have been accused of winding people up and other nasty things, which are not true. I am just honest.

You seem to hear things from some dreadful sensation mongers. I think they enjoy winding you up - you react splendidly to them.

thank you for that, someone told me they sit with their sick bowls. I was horrified.

In my experience no one talked to anyone else anyway - everyone had a book, magazine or headphones on.

And no one ever vomited!

I don't remember anyone vomiting when Dh was getting chemo, and I sat with him through every session. What DID drive us potty was the ding-dong of the IV machines whenever someone's drip needed attention - which seemed to be every two minutes or so - but you got used to it. Take a book or a musicplayer with earphones to pass the time.

They DO have a few cubicles, but they are for people who really need the privacy - if they "come over queer" and need to lie down, or have to undress for some reason. The staff can keep a much better eye on everyone else with them all sitting together and not each hidden away in their own little corner.

Some seats are in places more private than others - try to get there a bit early for your session, so that you get more of a choice of where you sit.

I'm exactly the same about vomiting ethelbags but on the few occaisions when DH has had to go for tests or treatment in the room where they do the IV chemo nobody has vomited! It tends to be quite friendly with everyone sitting round drinking tea .

Which hospital are you going to Ethelbags?

HI, dumpling, I wish our hospital would modernise its chemo day care centre, as they have to sit in a semi circle with other patients. I feel this is embarrassing to have others watching you while you have an IV drip. There is no other type of treatment you can have where there are other patients in the same area. It would not cost much to have cubicles added surely, if anyone vomits while Im there I will have hysterics I cant stand anyone vomiting or I will vomit too, I retch if I clean my teeth or see poo on the pavement.
Also I haven't told many people my condition and I know I will see someone I know and the cat will be out of the bag.

Our local hospital (Norfolk and Norwich) has just applied to extend their day care chemo treatment wards to nearly double the number of beds to accommodate the projected increase so more patients are being diagnosed. I just wish they would extent the rest of the hospital too!

ethel Change your GP. This is what DH did when we were worried that his usual GP was being dismissive about worrying symptoms. We stayed in the same (big) practice but he waited several weeks for an appointment with another GP in the practice who had been recommended to us. He saw him and within minutes had a diagnosis of diabetes.

I do think that sometimes it is the circumstances of our lives that lead to delay. I went through a very stressful period a few years ago, which included, for some months, caring on a daily basis for an elderly relation with dementia whose spouse had had a stroke. I had some worrying symptoms and I phoned the surgery but the receptionist was unhelpful and told me to ring back at 8.00am if I wanted an appointment, and we all know what this is like, or come to the surgery at 8.30.

I just couldn't do it, I was making 1, sometimes 2, 40 mile round trips a day in the opposite direction to visit and care for my relation, take them to visit their spouse in hospital and another round trip of 10 miles just to make a doctor's appointment was too much.

I did see the doctor a few months later when my relations were in a care home and the pressure reduced. After extensive tests it was decided my symptoms were stress related, but if there had been anything wrong, diagnosis would have been delayed by nearly 3 months.