Doug West

Cancer death rate in Britain down by almost a third since 1980s Huge improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment have driven the fall, Cancer Research UK says The rate of people dying from cancer in the UK has fallen by almost a third since the 1980s amid seismic progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, a report has found. About 247 in every 100,000 people die from cancer each year, a 29% drop from the peak in 1989 of about 355 per 100,000, according to an analysis by Cancer Research UK (CRUK). Continue reading...

Cancer death rate in Britain down by almost a third since 1980s

www.rcseng.ac.uk/news-and-eve... our annual National Lung Cancer Audit State of the Nation Report for England and Wales is online today. Encouraging improvements in early stage diagnosis and rates of surgery, but more still to do on reducing wait times for treatment.

Global and regional cancer burden attributable to modifiable risk factors to inform prevention - Nature Medicine Global cancer estimates across 185 countries show that 7.1 million new cancer cases were attributable to modifiable risk factors in 2022, with smoking, infections and alcohol consumption being the lea...

Smoking (15.1%), infections (10.2%) and alcohol consumption (3.2%) are the leading contributors to cancer burden worldwide.
www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ash.org @ashorguk.bsky.social #LungSky #RespEd

The National Cancer Plan includes proposals on #LungCancer screening, diagnostics, workforce and survivorship - offering real potential if implemented consistently & backed by resources.

More on the plan & what it means for lung cancer ➡️
www.uklcc.org.uk/blog/februar...

#WorldCancerDay

New best-practice recommendations on lung cancer prehabilitation have been published. Experts advocate offering prehab to all patients diagnosed with #LungCancer.

Read article 📄 ow.ly/p4Qe50XFLvF

Social determinants drive 30-day mortality after elective surgery.

by Sankar A, Ding J (...) Gomez D et 5 al. in JAMA Netw Open #Surgery #SurgSky #GeneralSurgery #MedSky

🪡 read our summary here
📖 read the article: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2843731

How does patient experience compare across different #NHS services?

In the latest surveys, #cancer patients responded most favourably of all the patient groups, while respondents to the Community Mental Health Survey rated their overall experience the lowest.

Find out more: buff.ly/QoEDiCE

ICYMI during the shutdown, here’s the announcement for the governors public health alliance (GPHA?)

Learn to to demonstrate the utility of the ultrasound doppler machine to scan the greater and short saphenous vein for Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) surgery.

Apply here ➡️ https://bit.ly/3KmBSYQ

Blackpool report: why do England’s deprived areas have the most troubled hospitals? Clinicians in deprived areas are overwhelmed by generational ill health and poverty

Blackpool report: why do England’s deprived areas have the most troubled hospitals?

Get this: Coffee suppressed atrial fibrillation!
Unexpected results for recurrence from a randomized trial in participants after cardioversion from AF
#AHA25 @jama.com
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

A structured database would have prevented the need for this laborious data cleaning. I'm just sayin'.

The New England Journal of Medicine Hypertonic Saline or Carbocisteine in Bronchiectasis A Research Summary based on Bradley JM et al. | 10.1056/NEJMoa2510095 | Published on September 28, 2025 Visual representations of the patients in the trial and the treatments they were assigned. Read the full Research Summary at NEJM.org.

In the CLEAR trial, neither carbocisteine nor hypertonic saline reduced the number of pulmonary exacerbations over a period of 52 weeks in participants with bronchiectasis. Full trial results and Research Summary: nej.md/3Vtn1h4

#MedSky #PulmSky #CriticalCare

A major new JAMA review by Dr Catherine Murphy, Prof Ben Solomon & Prof Charles Swanton brings together global data on #lungcancer in people with no smoking history.

Around 1 in 5 cases are ALK or EGFR-driven - highlighting the need for testing at diagnosis.

#LCSM

💡Did you know the number of illicit cigarettes smoked in the UK has fallen by almost 90% since 2000, but the tobacco industry still exploits concern about illicit sales to fight regulation and protect profits... 1/3

🫁 Parents living with #lungcancer and their children (aged 11–24) are invited to take part in a research event in London this November.

The Open University study explores wellbeing and family support needs.

👉 openss.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_etf8nRP4PKwwMIu

The American people deserve a public health system that puts science before politics.

That's why California and 14 other governors are joining forces to launch the Governors Public Health Alliance to protect communities and guarantee decisions are rooted in data and health.

An extraordinary and dangerous approach to public health- making the data fit your preconceptions. Paracetamol is safe.

Delighted that the GIRFT/SCTS joint pathway on surgery for pleural sepsis is now online. Many thanks to Rory Beattie, Guillermo Martinez, Syed Qadri, Jee Soo Choi and the GIRFT team for highlighting…... Delighted that the GIRFT/SCTS joint pathway on surgery for pleural sepsis is now online. Many thanks to Rory Beattie, Guillermo Martinez, Syed Qadri, Jee Soo Choi and the GIRFT team for highlighting ...

Delighted that the SCTS/GIRFT pathway for pleural sepsis surgery is now online www.linkedin.com/posts/dougla...

Those confidence intervals in full!

Gun murders last year:
US: 17,927
England & Wales: 22

Here's the data, per capita, in the chart below.

It's the guns. I wrote about the evidence, with lots of data, along with a more personal response to the Annunciation Church shooting (where I was baptized): www.forkingpaths.co/p/guns-at-an...

Lung disease and social justice - COPD as a manifestation of structural violence.
#WorldCOPDday www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1164/... @atscommunity.bsky.social @ats-assemblies.bsky.social

The wealth gap – and the health trap What drives the differences in population health among rich nations? Kate Pickett on the lower “wellbeing-adjusted” life expectancy of more unequal countries

“We found that countries with higher levels of income inequality are associated with higher rates of obesity, diabetes, mental illness, asthma, drug use and infant mortality” – @profkepickett.bsky.social of @equalitytrust.bsky.social in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog

🔗

Helsinki (pop 657,000) has not had a single traffic death during the last twelve months.

poliisi.fi/-/helsingin-...

The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

1. We interrupt this programming for some LEGITIMATELY GOOD NEWS

Violent crime in Baltimore has PLUMMETED to historic lows

How did the city do it?

Baltimore adopted a comprehensive set of "woke" policies, treating violence as a public health issue

The impact of nicotine reduction on cigarette reinforcement value within a marketplace containing alternative nicotine delivery products: A secondary analysis of a multi-site trial AbstractIntroduction. A mandated reduction in the nicotine content of cigarettes would likely improve public health. Prior research has shown that assignme

A mandated reduction in cigarette nicotine content is likely to reduce the reinforcement value of cigarettes in a marketplace where noncombusted products are available, find Tracy Smith et al.

academic.oup.com/ntr/advance-...

You’ve been sold a giant myth when it comes to improving your health Diet and exercise will only get you so far, but there is a magic bullet that could make us all live longer, says professor of global public health Devi Sridhar

"You’ve been sold a giant myth when it comes to improving your health" www.newscientist.com/article/2485...

Lots of us end up as 'accidental managers', thrown in at the deep end without any formal preparation for leading a team. If this sounds familiar to you, ShiftWorks can help you to with an introduction and induction to management.

Find out more: buff.ly/7fBXaq0