Is CXR rate associated with lung cancer stage distribution & mortality
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Is rate of investigation with chest x-ray associated with lung cancer stage distribution and mortality?
IRAS ID
288192
Contact name
Stephen Bradley
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 27 days
Research summary
The study will work out whether patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer who are cared for at General Practices which request higher numbers of chest x-rays (the 'chest x-ray rate' of the practice) are diagnosed with cancer in earlier stages and whether they live longer compared to patients at practices which request fewer chest x-rays.
Other research that has looked at this question can not give a conclusive answer, because it was based in one area over a period of time or because lung cancer stage was not recorded.
This study will be better equipped to answer this question because we will look at anonymised data for all patients in England diagnosed with lung cancer over a five year period. We will rank practices into groups based on how many chest x-rays they requested.
We will then compare the stage at diagnosis and how long they lived after diagnosis for all patients diagnosed with lung cancer based on the chest x-ray group of each patient's practice. We will perform statistical analysis which will take into account the differences between the individuals (such as age and sex) and we will work out whether patients who attended general practices which had higher chest x-ray rates were diagnosed at earlier stages and if they lived longer than patients who attended practices with lower chest x-ray rates.
This could be very useful to know, because if we show that increasing chest x-ray rate for practices results in earlier stage of diagnosis and longer survival then encouraging GPs to perform more chest x-rays could help improve cancer outcomes for patients.
REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/LO/0169
Date of REC Opinion
22 Feb 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion