Terminally ill man with lung cancer urges Scottish Government to introduce targeted lung cancer screening

Key Points

A terminally ill man from Johnstone is urging the Scottish Government to introduce a targeted lung cancer screening programme.
Graeme Dickie never smoked and says late diagnosis leaves patients with fewer treatment options.
Scotland has no national lung cancer screening despite it being recommended more than three years ago.
Cancer charities warn Scotland is falling behind England, which has already screened over a million people.
The Scottish Government says pilots are under way but a full rollout could take several years.

A man with terminal lung cancer who underwent 80 rounds of chemotherapy is urging the Scottish Government to introduce a targeted screening programme for the disease.

Graeme Dickie from Johnstone, Renfrewshire, never smoked and says too many people like him are being diagnosed too late, when treatment options are less effective.

Charities warn Scotland is “falling behind” other parts of the UK in tackling the issue after the government said earlier this year that a nationwide programme could take seven to ten years to introduce.

Until recently, Graeme’s attitude to life was to keep going and get on with things.

But everything changed when the former electrician was diagnosed with stage two lung cancer at the age of 42.

Graeme, now aged 55, told STV News: “The symptoms I had was just a crackle in my chest, particularly at night when I was sleeping or trying to sleep. I’d initially gone to my GP two years before that and thought it was just a wee chest infection.

“It didn’t clear up, it just flew on. But it took until February 2013 before I was diagnosed, when they told me I had a tumour.

“I was in denial that it would be anything sinister. I asked the respiratory consultant that and he said ‘you’re just unlucky’.”

There is currently no targeted lung cancer screening programme in Scotland, despite it being recommended more than three years ago for people at high risk, including smokers and former smokers in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

Although Graeme never smoked and would not have been eligible for screening, he believes it would still save lives.

He said: “I think we need to draw up the stigma, right, of lung cancer, being associated as a smoker’s disease, right, and you know, the earlier you get diagnosed, the easier it is to treat.

“Or the more options there is, the oncologists and the surgeons have all got a limited number of tools available to them.

“So we can make it easier for them by detecting it early and giving them more options on how they can treat us. Just go and see your GP, get checked.”

Professor Ahsan Akram, professor of thoracic oncology and imaging at the University of Edinburgh, is calling for screening to be rolled out in Scotland, having led the LungScot trial pilot.

He said: “Within the NHS, we see patients often presenting very late, where the chance of a cure from lung cancer is not possible.

“So the main aim of treatment in those situations is to keep the cancer at bay for as long as possible, but really we need to act fast and safely to get this rolled out as soon as possible.

“So many of the symptoms of lung cancer can be mistaken for other things, a chronic cough, feeling breathless, weight loss, and many of these symptoms when they do present means that your cancer is already at a late stage.

“That is why lung cancer screening is so important because we’re targeting people who have no symptoms at all, so we can diagnose their cancer as early as possible.

“We don’t have any screening at the moment in Scotland compared to NHS England, which has screened over a million people.”

Cancer Research UK says rolling out a screening programme should be a priority ahead of next year’s Holyrood election.

Dr Sorcha Hume, the charity’s public affairs manager in Scotland, said: “Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in Scotland, and we have over 5,000 new cases of lung cancer every year.

“Around two-thirds of lung cancer cases are diagnosed at a late stage when there are less treatment options available.

“If there’s less treatment options available, then they’re more likely to die of that cancer, which is really just not good enough when we know there are things that we can be doing to change that.”

She added: “The UK National Screening Committee, which is what all governments in the UK look to for the best evidence for screening programmes for cancer and other conditions.

“It’s been three years since they announced that they recommended that all four UK nations have a targeted lung cancer screening programme.

“We’re falling behind in Scotland in implementing that.

“So England are rushing ahead of us and we’ve had pilots in Scotland, but what we want to see is the Scottish Government committing to urgent rollout of this cancer screening programme, because it will save lives.

“There are huge inequalities associated, as smoking is the most common cause, most common preventable cause of cancer, and lung cancer particularly.

“There are things we can do. We’ve got the evidence. We just need to get our act together and get moving on that.”

Health secretary Neil Gray said the Scottish Government is committed to introducing lung cancer screening.

He said: “We are committed to bringing forward a lung screening programme, we are starting that in a pilot space to target those areas of high deprivation where we see the worst outcomes for lung cancer.

“We are taking the necessary steps now to ensure the necessary capacity is put into the system. The logistics of people, equipment, needs to be scaled up to deliver a screening programme; that work is at the planning stage and under way and will be moving forward as quickly as possible.”