A further expansion of the National Awareness and Early
Diagnosis Initiative (Cancer Research UK, 2014b) has been
recently announced, involving lowering thresholds for diagnosis
and increasing access to diagnostic services through the introduction
of more routes to diagnosis, potentially including patient selfreferral.
Symptom-based cancer investigation offers relatively little to the
majority of patients with symptoms, those whose symptoms were
caused by cancer, while offering a fair likelihood of early-stage
diagnosis to those identified serendipitously. It offers nothing to
the proportion of cancer sufferers who do not present with
symptoms at all, or who present atypically. In addition, the general
population with symptoms who do not have cancer must still
suffer all the disadvantages of cancer screening programmes: false
positives will undergo unnecessary, anxiety-provoking and invasive
investigations; true positives are at risk of over-diagnosis leading to
unnecessary major surgery. The Be Clear on Cancer campaign
reported a 20% increase in diagnostic investigations for lung
cancer, and a 9% increase in cancers detected, but also a 32%
increase in urgent referrals for suspected lung cancer (Cancer
Research UK, 2014a).
At the same time, the various safeguards that we associate with a
planned screening programme, such as equal opportunity to
benefit, logistic efficiency, and a national quality control programme,
will not be available in a symptom-based strategy as
currently conceived. Indeed, NHS England is actively encouraging
local commissioning groups to adopt a service configuration of
their own choice to promote earlier diagnosis. Among the options
suggested are: a role for pharmacists in cancer referrals, lowering
thresholds for urgent referral, and patient self-referral. We would
urge that a rigorous examination of costs and benefits is carried
out, perhaps by the National Screening Committee, before
symptom-based investigation programmes are further expanded.