Hospital Pioneers Cancer Service For Over 70s That Saves Lives And Money
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Treatment is adapted to take into account age-related illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes and dementia.
These three paragraphs outline, what the Christie Hospital is doing.
The Christie Hospital in Manchester is pioneering a specialist cancer service for elderly patients under plans to tackle a “silver tsunami” of cases.
More than 200 patients have been treated by the new team, which was set up to meet the more complex care needs of an ageing population.
The service has nearly halved the number of unplanned hospital admissions among older cancer patients, improving survival and quality of life.
But it’s the graph that follows that I find interesting.
It shows the cancer incidence rate (per 100,000 population) in 2020 by gender and age at diagnosis.
I am a control engineer and statistician and one of the most interesting things in a graph like this is the rate of increase or in this graph’s case the rate of decrease, as the graph effectively has the present at the top.
I have used an old trick and looked at the difference between the groups and the difference between the difference.
Note.
- It seems that the rate of increase of cancer diagnosis with age seems to increase with ages of 60-64 and 25-29.
- This would seem to correspond to those born before 1960 and those born before 1995.
- As a coeliac, I know that the first test for coeliac disease, which used endoscopy was introduced around 1960.
- The modern genetic test for coeliac disease was developed in the 1990s.
Is it coincidence, that the rate of increase of cancer diagnosis with age seems to increase, when a better diagnosis for coeliac disease was introduced?
These are my thoughts!
Coeliac Disease And Me
I am coeliac and I was born in 1947. I wasn’t diagnosed as coeliac until 1997.
I was an unhealthy child, with all sorts of avenues being chased, so in the end they just took my tonsils out.
- It should be remembered, that there was no test for coeliac disease in children until 1960.
- I’ve also only met one coeliac older than me and both her parents were GPs and she was diagnosed by food elimination.
- In fact, I never met a coeliac until I was about 25. He was the two-year-old son of one of C’s friends.
At fifty, an elderly locum gave me a present of a blood test to clear up my long-term health problems. The results showed that my body had very little Vitamin B12. Injections didn’t improve the level, so my GP sent me to Addenbrooke’s.
It was a Monday and all the consultant did was ask a nurse to take several vials of blood. He didn’t ask me any relevant questions or even touch me.
On the Wednesday morning, I got a letter from the hospital saying I was probably coeliac and it would be confirmed by endoscopy.
I must have been one of the first to have been diagnosed by a genetic test on a sample of blood.
Coeliac Disease And My Youngest Son
My youngest son was born in 1972 and after my diagnosis, my late wife felt he was coeliac, as physically he was so like me. But neither him nor our other two sons would get themselves tested.
I am now sure he was coeliac, as his daughter was born with a congenital hernia of the diaphragm and Swedish research says can happen with coeliac fathers. Luckily, she was born in the Royal London Hospital and thanks to heroic surgery at a few days old, she survived and is now in her first year at Southampton University.
Sadly my youngest son died of pancreatic cancer in 2011.
Coeliac Disease And Cancer
Nottingham University have shown that if you are coeliac and stick to a gluten-free diet, you are twenty-five percent less likely to suffer from cancer.
Cancer in the Over Sixties
The following is an extract from A Thought On Deaths Of The Elderly From Covid-19, which I wrote in April 2020.
How many undiagnosed coeliacs are there in those over seventy, who because they are coeliacs, have a compromised immune system?
I would be undiagnosed but for that elderly locum!
How many other coeliacs are there in the UK population?
- Age UK has a figure of twelve million who are over 65 in the UK.
- If 1-in-100, as stated by Coeliac UK, in the UK are coeliac, that is 120,000 coeliacs over 65, who are too old to have been diagnosed as a child, because no test existed.
Note that as of today 177,388 have been diagnosed with Covid-19.
Could the drop in the cancer rate of those born before 1960 be because of the availability of a test for coeliac disease, so that if they were a sickly child like me, they would be diagnosed? As I said earlier diagnosed coeliacs have a lower cancer rate than the general population.
Cancer in the Under Thirties
I was diagnosed in 1997 by a genetic blood test and there is no doubt that I have coeliac disease.
As the test is so simple, I wonder what proportion of coeliacs born since the Millennium have been diagnosed.
And how does this contribute to the drop in cancer cases?
More Research Needs To Be Done
It is obvious to me, that research needs to be done into the link between undiagnosed coeliacs and cancer.
It might be prudent to test every cancer patient for coeliac disease. My GP told me, that the test is not expensive and generally gives the right result.
The Anonymous Widower 