NICE has updated its e-learning module on lung cancer, to coincide with a new government campaign raising awareness of the condition.
Lung cancer is the largest cause of death among cancers in England, leading to 28,000 deaths per year. It also has one of the lowest survival rates due to delays in diagnosis, with two-thirds of patients being diagnosed at a later stage.
The Department of Health (DH) is currently running a campaign to improve early diagnosis of the condition, by raising awareness of symptoms and making it easier for people to discuss them with their GPs.
The focus of the ‘Be clear on cancer' campaign is that a persistent three-week cough is a potential symptom for chest X-ray. This follows a key recommendation from NICE in its lung cancer clinical guideline.
Initial findings from a DH pilot showed that the campaign increased the number of people who visited their GP with symptoms by 23 per cent.
To help GPs with the potential increase in the number of patients visiting with symptoms, NICE has updated its e-learning module on identifying presenting features of lung cancer.
Produced in collaboration with BMJ Learning, 'Suspected lung cancer: when you should refer' is an hour-long module that will help GPs become familiar with typical presenting features of lung cancer, identify unusual presentations of lung cancer, and know when to refer patients with suspected lung cancer to a specialist team.
The module is based on NICE's guideline on lung cancer, which also states that if a chest X-ray or computed tomography (CT) scan suggests lung cancer (including pleural effusion and slowly resolving consolidation), patients should be offered an urgent referral to a member of the lung cancer multidisciplinary team, which is usually a chest physician.
NICE's guideline on lung cancer, together with tools to support its use such as a clinical audit tool, a costing report and a slide set, are all available from our website.