Diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer: summary of updated NICE guidance

All healthcare professionals involved at any stage of the care pathway have important roles to play in tackling these inequalities. [...]the 2005 guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) on the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer was updated to advise healthcare professionals of important advances in management and to ensure patients have a supported, informed choice of the treatment that will help them most. Referral (recommendations retained from 2005) Offer urgent referral for a chest radiography when a patient presents with: -Haemoptysis or -Any of the following unexplained or persistent (lasting more than three weeks) symptoms or signs: cough, chest or shoulder pain, dyspnoea, hoarseness, weight loss, chest signs, finger clubbing, features suggestive of metastasis from a lung cancer (for example, in the brain, bone, liver, or skin), or cervical or supraclavicular lymphadenopathy If chest radiography or chest computed tomography suggests lung cancer (including pleural effusion and slowly resolving consolidation), offer an urgent referral to a member of the lung cancer multidisciplinary team, usually a chest physician. If the chest x ray film is normal but there is a high suspicion of lung cancer, offer urgent referral to a member of the lung cancer multidisciplinary team, usually the chest physician Offer an urgent referral to a member of the lung cancer multidisciplinary team, usually the chest physician, while awaiting the result of chest radiography, if any of the following are present: -Persistent haemoptysis in smokers and former smokers older than 40 years -Signs of superior...