Fabio Ynoe de Moraes, Radiation Oncologist and Associate Professor at Queen’s University, shared a post on LinkedIn by John Edwards, Consultant Thoracic Surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, adding:
“New evidence on how where you live and how deprived your area is shapes access to curative treatment for early-stage lung cancer in England.
In a new population-based study in the Journal of Cancer Policy, Kagenaar et al. analysed 38,229 patients with early-stage NSCLC using linked national cancer registry and treatment data.PubMed
What they found
Patients in the most deprived areas were
- 11 percentage points less likely to receive curative-intent surgery
- 4.3 percentage points more likely to receive curative-intent radiotherapy (often SABR) compared with those in the least deprived areas.PubMed
Compared with residents of the five largest cities, those living in other urban areas and rural areas were significantly less likely to receive curative surgery, with smaller but still present gaps in access to curative radiotherapy.PubMed
Why this matters
These findings highlight that ‘postcode’ still predicts access to curative-intent treatment for early-stage NSCLC – both in terms of deprivation and urban–rural residence. Expanding high-quality radiotherapy capacity (including SABR) closer to where patients live could help narrow these gaps, but the impact on survival and quality of life needs to be rigorously evaluated.PubMed
For anyone working in lung cancer, health services research, or cancer policy, this is an important read for thinking about how we design equitable thoracic oncology pathways in publicly funded systems.
Article: ‘Inequalities in the utilisation of curative-intent treatments for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer across urban and rural areas: A population-based study in England’ – Journal of Cancer Policy, 2025.”
Quoting John Edwards’ post:
“It’s been fascinating and a privilege for Corinne Faivre-Finn and me to work with Richard Grieve, Eva Kagenaar, David G. Lugo Palacios, Ajay Aggarwal, Andrew Hutchins, and Bernard Rachet of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London, on the ‘SORT’ project.
Exposure to new and fruitful methodology and a highly energised team has resulted in the first publication of (I hope) many. We have much to learn in Lung Cancer from ‘Big Data’, so watch this space with interest!”
Title: Inequalities in the utilisation of curative-intent treatments for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer across urban and rural areas: A population-based study in England
Authors: Eva Kagenaar, David G. Lugo-Palacios, Ajay Aggarwal, Andrew Hutchings, Lu Han, Stephen O’Neill, Bernard Rachet, John Edwards, Corinne Faivre-Finn, and Richard Grieve
You can read the Full Article in the Journal of Cancer Policy.
More posts featuring Fabio Ynoe de Moraes.