Lung Cancer: Radiotherapy

(asked on 11th March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to support the extension of stereotactic body radiation therapy services for lung cancer in radiotherapy centres throughout England.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 19th March 2019

In 2016/17, regional specialised commissioning teams undertook a review of local access to stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) in the treatment of early non-small cell lung cancer for patients not suitable for surgery, in line with the current clinical commissioning policy, to ensure sufficient capacity. This review resulted in an increase from 17 SABR Centres in England to 25 and all centres underwent an external quality assurance process prior to commencing treatment delivery.

NHS England is committed to expanding access to all forms of evidence based innovative radiotherapy. Such radiotherapy usually involves the highly targeted delivery of a higher radiation dose given in a smaller number of fractions. SABR is an example of this type of radiotherapy.

To support this approach, NHS England has invested in both clinical trials, Commissioning through Evaluation and is also investing £130 million to modernise radiotherapy equipment. This means that new technologies able to deliver innovative treatments using image guidance at the time of treatment are gradually becoming widely available. NHS England is also investing in the establishment of 11 Radiotherapy Operational Delivery Networks which are expected to play an important role in driving the development of local radiotherapy services, including expanding access to innovative radiotherapy and clinical trial participation. At this stage, no estimate has been made of the numbers of radiotherapy centres that will be delivering SABR in either 2020 or 2029.

Reticulating Splines