People over the age of 74 are excluded from routine NHS lung cancer screening, as are women over 70 from routine breast screening, and you won't be given the shingles jab if you're 80 or above.
Waiting for the results of a chest scan last year, Diane Galloway was braced for a diagnosis of a serious lung condition.
'I'd never even heard of an aneurysm before, and I didn't have any symptoms for it,' recalls Diane, a widow and retired carer from London. However, there are huge disparities between men and women in the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of AAA. Indeed, a potentially fatal rupture can be the first time many women become aware of the problem. Yet if detected early, AAA can be repaired, either by open surgery or by keyhole surgery .
When it came to diagnosing her AAA, Diane was one of the lucky ones: she was also lucky to be able to have keyhole surgery . The operation was a success and she went home a week later. Overall, even though surgery is the only treatment, a third of women are not offered it at all — compared with less than a fifth of men diagnosed with AAA. And death rates in women who do have surgery for AAA are nearly twice those for men — largely due to late diagnosis and also to the fact that women's smaller arteries can make surgery more difficult.
'Ninety six per cent of patients involved in clinical trials into AAA are men, and the results of these trials have been applied to women. Yet we know that women's bodies are generally smaller than men's, and we believe this means we should be treating women with AAA when the aneurysm is a smaller size than we are doing currently.'
The 1,200 women participants will be monitored for five years, and their outcomes compared with those of women using the current 'male' definitions. Researchers hope the new definitions will mean women with AAA are treated earlier and with better outcomes — if this is the case, it could make screening of women more cost-effective so it could be rolled out, a move that is already supported by other experts.
It is expected to detect 9,000 cancers annually, saving lives by picking up the disease in the early stages when it is easier to treat .Even if you are outside the screening age limits, you can ask to be checked in some cases . CERVICAL CANCER: Women aged 25 to 64 are offered regular screening. Women over 65 can have a test if they’ve had an abnormal result or haven’t been screened since they were 50.
Professor David Baldwin, a consultant respiratory physician and clinical adviser on lung cancer screening, says: 'It's a difficult call. There will always be some people who are not eligible who, sadly, develop cancer.' Any screening test involves weighing the risks of identifying disease that doesn't need treatment and the potential harm caused by the treatments themselves against the benefit of early diagnosis when a disease is easier to treat, adds Amy Hirst, health information manager at Cancer Research UK.
'Since some women will have a limited remaining lifespan at this age, this makes breast cancer screening less effective.'But the risk balance is different in women whose life expectancy is greater than ten years, he adds. 'Therefore, breast cancer screening recommendations should be individualised and tailored based on other factors they may have that put them at increased risk, breast density , and the expected life expectancy for the woman concerned.
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