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Written question asked by David Laws (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 23 April 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 25 April 2007. It was answered by Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Labour) on Tuesday, 15 May 2007 on behalf of the Department of Health.


Heart Diseases

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the survival rates from (a) heart attack and (b) all cancers were in (i) the most recent period for which figures are available, (ii) 1997 and (iii) 1987.
Answer

Data to enable assessment of survival after heart attack are not collected centrally. However treatment for heart attack has been audited since 2002 in England. This data indicates that in 2002 the 30-day mortality rate following treatment for heart attack was about 11 per cent. For 2006, the figure was about 9.5 per cent.Data source: Myocardial Infarction National Audit Project (MINAP)No assessment has been made of survival rates from all cancers for the periods in question.Information on one-year and five-year survival rates by individual cancer type is published by the Office for National Statistics. The information has been placed in the Library and is available of their website at:"www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=861&Pos=3&ColRank=1&Rank=374."The last published information covers patients diagnosed with cancer between 1998 and 2001.Compared with results for patients diagnosed during 1996-99, the five-year survival figures for patients diagnosed during 1998-2001 were around 2.5 percentage points higher for breast cancer in women and for colon cancer in both men and women. Survival for lung cancer increased slightly, by half a percentage point in men and by just over 1 percentage point in women. For prostate cancer, there was a rise of 6 percentage points, but much of this was due to the increasingly widespread use of prostate-specific antigen testing.


Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
134158; 460 c722W
Session
2006-07
Related items
Deposited Paper DEP 07/1158
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Deposited papers
House of Commons
Subjects
Death Cancer Heart diseases
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk