Many U.K. cancers found in emergency room

LONDON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- New statistics show that nearly a quarter of the cancer cases diagnosed in Great Britain are discovered in the emergency room.

The National Cancer Intelligence Network said the poor and elderly are most likely to come into the ER in the late stages of cancers that some experts say should have been caught earlier.

"The figure for diagnoses via emergency presentations is way too high," said Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK. "This statistic helps explain why we have lower survival rates than we would hope to have, lower than the best countries in Europe."

Kumar and other cancer specialists told The Daily Telegraph that a lack of awareness by the public and general-practice physicians needs to be addressed so the disease can be diagnosed before it progresses too far.

The newspaper said Saturday 23 percent of all cancer cases diagnosed in 2007 were detected in the emergency room. The figure was much lower for skin and breast cancers but as high as 50 percent for hard-to-see varieties such as leukemia or brain tumors.