Secondary Breast Cancer

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:26 pm on 18 November 2008.

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Photo of Linda Riordan Linda Riordan Labour, Halifax 8:26, 18 November 2008

I am delighted to have secured this debate on such an important subject. There are an estimated 2 million people in the UK living with or beyond cancer. An estimated 550,000 of them have had a diagnosis of breast cancer. That includes people who have completed their treatment and are cancer-free, as well as those who are living with the active disease. A sizeable proportion of those 550,000 people could be living with secondary or metastatic breast cancer, which occurs when cancer spreads from the breast—the primary tumour site—to another part of the body, such as the liver or the bones. At that point, the disease does not become, say, liver cancer. It is, in fact, still breast cancer that has spread to the liver.

Once breast cancer has spread in that way, it cannot be cured, but innovative drug treatments have been developed that allow the cancer to be controlled and improve the quality of life for patients living with it, thereby making the cancer life-limiting. Yet at present it is impossible to know exactly how large the group of people living with such secondary cancer is, as incidence data are not routinely collected or widely available.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend Ann Keen, knows that Breast Cancer Care established the secondary breast cancer taskforce in 2006 to improve the treatment, support and care of people living with secondary breast cancer in the UK. The taskforce was set up when Breast Cancer Care heard that that patient group felt neglected, in terms of the care and support that it received. Since then, there have been some steps in the right direction, and both Breast Cancer Care and I offer our congratulations on that. However, there are four key issues that the organisation has focused on to ensure that those living with secondary breast cancer are given the same high standard of care and support that they received when diagnosed the first time around.

The first of those issues is the collection of data. We do not know how many people are living with secondary breast cancer in the UK, as those data are not routinely collected. Without those data, it is unclear how many people diagnosed with primary breast cancer go on to develop it in a secondary form. In addition, the median survival time for metastatic breast cancer is estimated at three years, yet some patients will live substantially longer—for up to 10 or 15 years, in some cases.

I welcome the formation of the national cancer intelligence network, which is committed to building and retaining a new national repository of cancer data. It is an important step. Without knowing how many people are living with secondary breast cancer in England, it is impossible to provide adequate services for them. However, I look for reassurances today from the Minister that the Department of Health will make every effort to ensure that the data are collected, and collected in a timely manner, so that the necessary assessments of care for secondary patients can be made.

The second focus is on co-ordination of care. Better co-ordination of care remains one of the most challenging aspects to improving care for this patient group, and access to a clinical nurse specialist or a key worker who has the skills and knowledge to manage metastatic breast cancer is a top priority. Breast cancer nurses bring immense benefits for people living with that cancer. They act as a point of contact, providing and signposting individuals to sources of emotional and psychosocial support—particularly as a secondary or metastatic diagnosis is treatable but not curable, and is therefore devastating for the patient.

National guidance states that breast cancer patients should have access to a named person whom they can contact about their care at any time. Yet breast cancer patients on the taskforce have highlighted the lack of access and the fact that secondary breast cancer patients seem to fall through a gap between the breast cancer unit and the palliative care services.