According Cancer Research UK,  4 in 10 or 40% of cancers are preventable.  That is a very powerful statistic!!

From a Cancer Prevention perspective, this certainly throws down the gauntlet for us to maximise the proportion of cancers which are prevented from developing in the first place; what we call ‘’Primary Prevention’’.  In my experience, clinicians, managers, healthy working life colleagues as well as voluntary sector and local authority partners are really enthusiastic about getting the cancer prevention messages out to the public.  Getting the messages out is not enough on its own however.  We also need to make it easy for people to make the best lifestyle choices and that is much more about tackling inequalities in health, like poverty, (no easy feat) as well as making it easy for people to access to high quality, inexpensive food and green spaces etc.

In the last few years we have been working very hard to increase the proportion of cancers which are picked up at the earliest stage through the Scottish Detect Cancer Early work. The rationale for this is that the earlier cancer is detected, the better the outlook for patients.  There has been a relative 6.5% increase in the percentage of people diagnosed at stage 1, the earliest stage possible, for breast, colorectal and lung cancer (altogether) between 2010, 2011 and 2013 and 2014. This is a 1.5 % increase from the (2010,11) baseline.  DCE has led to better recording of cancer stage overall and part of the improvement in the percentage of cases diagnosed at stage 1 will be due to this.

For individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer, there are now many evidence based opportunities for what we call ‘Secondary Prevention’ where clinicians can use the time of diagnosis or recovery to prompt lifestyle change(s) at a time when these messages can make a significant impact.  This is often referred to as a teachable moment and can be very powerful particularly where clinicians are able to link the proposed lifestyle change(s) to important benefit(s) for the individual.  Increasingly evidence is mounting about what patients themselves can contribute to achieving the best outcomes for themselves.  If they are able to manage their weight and also take enough exercise these things can have a significant impact on outcomes like their cancer recurrence rate etc.  So much so that patients tell us that we are being negligent if we don’t incorporate this information into their treatment plans.

With a staggering predicted increasing incidence in cancer, of 33% between 2008-2012 and 2023-2027, mainly due to an ageing population, we need to do all we can to optimise primary and secondary cancer prevention and early detection.