Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in Hemsworth constituency are currently being treated for prostate cancer, what the average waiting time for treatment of such people is; and what steps his Department is taking to raise awareness of prostate cancer.

The information is not available in the format requested. The following table shows the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs) with a primary diagnosis of prostate cancer, and the average time these patients waited in Hemsworth constituency in 2012-13.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

1. An FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

2. Time waited (days) statistics from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) are not the same as published Referral to Treatment (RTT) time waited statistics. HES provides counts and time waited for all patients between decision to admit and admission to hospital within a given period. Published RTT waiting statistics measure the time waited between referral and start of treatment.

3. The total number of eligible admissions from which the mean and median time waited are derived. This includes waiting list and booked admissions, but not planned admissions. A waiting list admission is one in which a patient has been admitted electively into hospital from a waiting list, having been given no date of admission at the time a decision to admit was made. Booked admissions are those in which the patient was admitted electively having been given a date at the time it was decided to admit. Planned admissions are excluded as they are usually part of a planned sequence of clinical care determined mainly on clinical criteria, which, for example, could require a series of events, perhaps taking place every three months, six months or annually. It is the case that some providers do not supply the data required to calculate a time waited on eligible episodes.

4. The parliamentary constituency uses the patient's normal home address. This does not necessarily reflect where the patient was treated as they may have travelled to another parliamentary constituency for treatment.

Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer, published in January 2011, committed over £450 million over the four years up to 2014-15 to achieve earlier diagnosis of cancer. This included funding for centrally-led Be Clear on Cancer campaigns, which aim to raise awareness of the symptoms of cancer, get symptomatic patients to present earlier, and work to help support general practitioners (GPs).

Prostate cancer is challenging from the perspective of driving early diagnosis through a social marketing campaign, as the symptoms of prostate cancer are the same as for other benign prostate disease. However, due to their increased risk, we are actively considering prostate cancer within African-Caribbean men as the subject for a local pilot activity. In addition, awareness is raised through the Prostate Cancer Risk Management Programme, which is in place to ensure that men over 50 without symptoms of prostate cancer can have a prostate specific antigen test free on the national health service after careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the test and after a discussion with a GP.