We meet the everyday heroes of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) | Latest news

NUH Consultant and Government Cancer Plan adviser proud to be putting Nottingham on the map.

The National Cancer Plan for England has been released this month and David Baldwin, a consultant lung specialist at NUH , is the Chair of the UK Clinical Expert Group for Lung Cancer who advised government on the cancer plan. David has been talking to us about the recommendations on lung cancer that have been included in the plan and gives us a glimpse into the amazing work he and his team, do at NUH.

Did you know? - Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in men and women but is the leading cause of premature death from cancer, killing more people than breast cancer and bowel cancer combined.

Early diagnosis is key to saving lives and England has one of the most successful programs in the world which the government have confirmed will be rolled out to all those eligible by 2030.

We meet David and his team at the Endoscopy Centre at City Hospital for one of his clinics where he has a list of patients who are having an Endobronchial Ultrasound – known as an EBUS procedure – a common procedure during the lung cancer work up pathway. It aims to get samples from the glands in the centre of the chest, in the mediastinum and the pulmonary hilum. And this enables them to stage (determine size or spread) and diagnose the patient in one go.

In just one of a long corridor of procedure rooms, we watch David along with his assisting team and the anaesthetist team carefully explain everything to the nervous patient, putting her at ease and then meticulously taking those samples.

David explains after the procedure: “This was a slightly more unusual case which will be deciphering if lung cancer has returned and highlights the importance of this work.

“We've got a fantastic team here, a group of people who are really on it. They really know their stuff and give the patients the best treatment, so I'm proud to be a part of that.”

 Two big achievements that NUH, alongside other local healthcare and higher education partners have played a huge part in, are now the two major policy changes in lung cancer in England and in some of the UK countries:

1.      National optimal lung cancer pathway – rapid time pathway designed to get patients through to diagnosis as fast as possible once they present.

2.      Lung cancer screening programme - the sixth adult screening programme that has been achieved - much of that was led from Nottingham.

 Talking more about the new Cancer Plan, David explains what he and the UK Clinical Expert Group hoped to see from the plan: “One of the things we wanted to do is to make sure there was a firm commitment to full roll out of the national screening program by 2030 and that is in the plan.”

NUH’s screening program has already screened over 20 thousand people, and the service is seeing a marked increase in early-stage cancers, curative surgery and radiotherapy.  

Along with the screening programme, David is pleased to see the inclusion of some other recommendations in the cancer plan.

David explained: “We also wanted to address the problem of early symptomatic diagnosis, and I see they've included self-referral chest x-rays, which is something that we were recommending as well.”

David is keen to explain these achievements are a much wider team effort than just NUH: “A lot of these initiatives of course are not just Nottingham because you can't do such big things with just one or two people.

“It has to be a big national or even international team that does this and that's what we've done.

“But a lot of the leadership has come from Nottingham, and it's certainly put Nottingham on the map.”