Respiratory symptoms awareness campaign: Resources

You can find out more about the statistics in your local area using Public Health England's GP Practice Profiles or Cancer e-Atlas.

View Public Health England's GP Practice Profiles. Source information about key indicators relating to cancer services for most GP practices in England. These profiles aim to help GP practices consider which services they offer to their patients.

Learn more about lung cancer statistics

Learn more about GP practice and local data

The NICE referral guideline for suspected cancer was updated in 2015. Cancer Research UK has produced an interactive desk easel for GPs, which summarises the NG12 guidelines. GPs can access the summary from their computer and click through to the recommendations for each symptom group:

Download the interactive desk easel

Cancer Research UK also developed summaries of the referral guidelines in other various formats:

• Infographic style: Symptoms are grouped according to organ system, with a key directing you to NICE’s recommendations.
• Text style: Symptoms are displayed alphabetically, with a key directing you to NICE’s recommendations.
• Table style: Information is displayed in a table format with recommended pathways displayed along the top of the table.

You can also order physical copies of these poster resources, for free, from the CRUK publications website. For more information please visit the page. 

NICE guidelines for cardiovascular and respiratory conditions are also available.

The Department of Health published 'Direct access to diagnostic tests for cancer: best practice referral pathways for general practitioners’, which aims to help GPs determine which patients would be suitable for direct referral to local services providing the diagnostic tests.

It deals specifically with the circumstances and symptoms that may warrant such referrals and is aimed at healthcare professionals across primary and secondary care and those who both provide and commission services.

The Accelerate, Coordinate, Evaluate (ACE) Programme is an early diagnosis initiative focused on testing innovations that either identify individuals at high risk of cancer earlier, or streamline diagnostic pathways. It was set-up to accelerate the pace of change in this area by adding to the knowledge base and is delivered with support from: NHS England, Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support; with support on evaluation provided by the Department of Health’s Policy Research Units (PRUs).

Learnings from this programme of work on the lung cancer pathway are now available, and can be found here. 

You can order or download a leaflet that explains Urgent Referrals from Cancer Research UK. These can be used to help patients who have been urgently referred with suspected cancer.

The BMJ learning module 'suspected lung cancer: when you should refer', developed in association with NICE, aims to help you to:

• be familiar with the typical presenting features of lung cancer;
• identify unusual presentations of lung cancer; and
• know when to refer patients with suspected lung cancer. Why not take a look and earn an extra CPD credit

We have created a list with a range of studies that look at the evidence for lung cancer, COPD and heart disease. This is not an exhaustive list, but highlighted are some recent findings from research into lung and heart disease. You may find these useful for understanding more about the disease areas that the respiratory symptoms campaign is focusing on. 

Please follow the link for more information