More than 5,000 people in England have been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier thanks to an innovative NHS initiative, which uses mobile scanning trucks to visit local communities.
The NHS Targeted Lung Health Check Programme is the biggest initiative in NHS history aimed at improving early lung cancer diagnosis, and is specifically targeted at areas of the country with the highest rates of lung cancer.
The latest NHS data shows that 5,037 lung cancers have now been found through the programme since its launch in 2019.
Data also shows that more than three-quarters (76%) of the lung cancers identified by the programme were found at the earliest stages of one and two, when it is potentially curable. People diagnosed with lung cancer at the earliest stages are nearly 20 times more likely to survive for five years than those whose cancer is caught late.
In Wessex, the early diagnosis rate for lung cancers found by the TLHC programme is 80%.
