Cancer primary care needs improvement

Cancer primary care needs improvement

Media Release - University of Auckland - 2 March 2016
Embargoed to 8am Friday 4th March NZT

New Zealand needs to improve its early diagnosis of cancer and providing optimum treatment, if we are to catch up with cancer care progress in Australia, according to new research from the University of Auckland.

There is lower survival from cancer in New Zealand than in Australia, and this difference has increased for patients diagnosed in 2006-10, compared to earlier years.

The results were published in the international online medical journal, PLoS One today. [March 4]

“For all cancers combined, and for lung and bowel cancer, the improvements in survival and the greater improvements in Australia were mainly in one-year survival, suggesting factors related to diagnosis and presentation,” says Professor Elwood. “For breast cancer, the improvements were similar in each country and seen in survival after the first year.”

“We need to improve our efforts, particularly to improve early diagnosis starting in primary care, as well as optimum treatment, for New Zealand cancer patients to catch up with the progress in Australia,” says Professor Elwood. “When we have data on more recently diagnosed patients, after 2010, we will be able to see whether these trends are continuing or have changed.”

There are now several studies that have shown that cancer patients in New Zealand have fewer good outcomes, assessed as survival in the years after diagnosis, than patients with the same cancers in Australia.

“For patients diagnosed in 2006-10, we showed in a previous study than there were about 12 percent more deaths in the five years since diagnosis in New Zealand than there would be if survival rates were the same as Australia,” says Professor Elwood.

“This further study tests if the differences were decreasing, as we would hope, as improving health services deal with inequities,” he says. “It looks at changes in cancer survival between patients diagnosed in 2000-05 and those diagnosed in 2006-10 in each country, using data from the national cancer registries.”

The latest study found that in Australia there were significant improvements (6.0 percent in men, 3.0 percent in women) in overall five-year cancer survival with substantial increases in survival from major cancer sites such as lung, bowel, prostate, and breast cancers.

In New Zealand there was only a 1.8 percent increase in cancer survival in men and 1.3 percent in women, with non-significant changes in survival from lung and bowel cancers, although there were increases in survival from prostate and breast cancers.

ENDS

© Scoop Media