Lung cancer: audit shows improvement in surgery survival

Significantly more patients are undergoing surgery for lung cancer, and survival rates are improving, shows a new report that analysed progress over the past 35 years.1

The report by the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland, which was shared exclusively with The BMJ before publication, included data on patients who had lung cancer surgery between 1980 and 2015. It said that several quality markers had notably improved over that period but emphasised that more work was needed to increase earlier detection of the disease.

The society has called for a review to determine whether introducing a new national lung screening programme could improve the …