HES on... Lung cancer

According to Macmillan Cancer Support, one person every 15 minutes is diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK. This article gives an overview of the condition and highlights related 2006-07 HES data.

What is lung cancer?

Lung cancer (bronchial carcinoma) is cancer of the lining cells of the air tubes (bronchi). There are different types of lung cancer depending on which type of cell in the lungs becomes cancerous.

There are two main types of primary lung cancer (cancer that started in the lungs, rather than spread to the lungs from elsewhere in the body):

• small cell lung cancer (SCLC), which tends to spread rapidly
• non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which tends to be relatively slow growing.

Smoking is known to be the cause of most lung cancers. Other causes include prolonged or close contact with asbestos, uranium, chromium and nickel.

Who does it affect?

According to NHS Choices, around 38,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK each year.

Lung cancer is more common in people over 40. HES data for England for 2006-07 confirms this (see graph below).

HES facts and figures

HES data for lung cancer (diagnosis codes C33-C34 in ICD-10) show that:

• most hospital admissions for lung cancer are from waiting lists
• where procedures were carried out on admitted patients, the most common were:
• Other intravenous injection (X35 in OPCS-4.3)
• Delivery of chemotherapy for neoplasm (X72 in OPCS-4.3)
• Diagnostic fibreoptic endoscopic examination of lower respiratory tract (E49 in OPCS-4.3)
• it was responsible for 101,081 episodes of admitted patient care, accounting for 381,294 occupied bed days.