Corby Lakeside has recruited its first patients in a three-year Targeted Lung Health Check programme, which is being run in conjunction with Kettering General Hospital.
Participants aged between 55 and 74 with a history of smoking will be invited to take part. If, after a healthcare questionnaire, they fit the criteria they will be invited for two separate CT scans at the mobile unit in Corby. Results will be sent to Kettering General Hospital and, if necessary, follow up advice and/or treatment will be given.
Corby is one of a series of towns running the project which is aimed at detecting lung cancers in the early stages after pilot projects proved successful.
Teri White, Operations Manager, is project managing the roll-out at Corby Lakeside. She said: 'It is something extra that we can offer our patients and means that we can catch things a lot earlier and deal with them. We have a small team at Lakeside that is running it, including Dr Sudeep Rai - GP Partner and Responsible Assessor, our nurse practitioner, a healthcare assistant and admin support.
'All of the Corby practices are signing up for this and we hope to recruit about 8,000 patients to the study over the three years. Anything that is picked up around lungs is looked at by the multi-disciplinary team and KGH will automatically refer them to where they need to be. Anything else will be dealt with by GPs locally. We have prepared patient packs for all those signing up and there has been a really good response.'
Dr Sudeep Rai said: 'This is a really exciting long-term project that will allow us to monitor patients, safeguarding their lung health and picking up any potential abnormalities earlier than may otherwise have been the case. The community has responded really positively to this initiative. Lung health is such an important area to focus on and so any additional service we can give to support our patients is hugely beneficial, both in terms of safeguarding their own individual health and also enabling us to track trends across the community as a whole.'