ALL smokers over 40 are advice to be tested for cancer.

When Maria Arundel’s husband, Richard, died from lung cancer aged 65, she felt her life was over.

Yet she also credits his death as the reason she was saved from succumbing to the same disease.

With no screening programme for lung cancer in this country, it was only because she’d seen her husband’s illness that Maria reacted quickly when she too started to feel breathless and lost weight.

I was much luckier than Richard,’ recalls Maria, 61, a former publican from South London who used to smoke.

‘My lung cancer was picked up early.

'By the time Richard was diagnosed it had spread to his liver. His suffering was terrible.

'He went through so much to fight it with aggressive chemotherapy. But he didn’t have a chance.’ 

What saved Maria’s life was a CT scan — which, unlike an X-ray, sends several beams simultaneously through the body to produce a much clearer, more detailed picture of the lungs.

With a chest X-ray, which Richard had, cancer can remain hidden behind the heart in one of the lung tubes or may be too small for a single X-ray to pick up.

So while Maria had to endure six months of chemotherapy and ten bouts of radiation, her cancer was picked up early and the treatment appears to have been a success.

She was one of the lucky ones. Lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer in the UK, causing around 35,000 deaths a year.

Last week, research revealed that lung cancer has overtaken breast cancer as the deadliest form of the disease among female Britons, killing 16,000 women each year. 

The statistics make for grim reading, with the five-year survival rate for a stage-four (advanced) cancer between 2 and 5 per cent.

Worryingly, 85 per cent of patients remain undiagnosed until the disease has reached an advanced stage, when it is very difficult to treat.

Early detection offers the greatest chance of survival. NHS advice is to seek medical attention if a cough has lasted longer than three weeks. 

But in order to catch the cancer while it is still treatable, some experts are calling for a national screening programme of pre-emptive CT scans for people at risk.

‘Ironically, the most common form of the disease — non small cell lung cancer, affecting 85 per cent of patients — is slow growing,’ says Dr Rohrit Lal, a medical oncologist specialising in lung cancers at  Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, South London. 

A small number of people who do not have cancer or have early-stage cancer have died from these tests because of partial lung collapse and respiratory problems.

Similar problems beset the national breast screening programme.

One controversial Danish study found that 7,000 British women a year needlessly undergo treatment, including mastectomy.

Doubts about unnecessary treatment have been raised following suggestions that a similar screening programme for prostate cancer should be introduced.

‘The other issue is how long do you go on screening for?’ adds Dr Keith Prowse, of the British Lung Foundation.

‘What happens after three years — do we just keep scanning people who don’t have symptoms?

'Also, a lung cancer can develop at any time. You could scan someone today, and tomorrow they could develop a cancer.’

That’s why any lung cancer screening has to be narrowed, adds Professor Spiro, perhaps to people over 50 that have had a 20 pack or more habit a day and already have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — the umbrella name for a collection of lung diseases, including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and chronic obstructive airways disease, which are linked to an increased risk of lung cancer.

Another option is a blood test screening programme, which is being trialled with 10,000 smokers in Scotland. 

The participants have smoked at least 20 a day for more than 20 years — half are being offered a blood test that detects cancer at its earliest stages of development up to five years before it would normally be detected; the other half will not be screened. The first results are expected in 2014.

Another option being researched is breath analysis. Scientists at the Keele University, Staffordshire, have found that compounds in breath could be used as indicators for tumours. 

This treatment would be cheaper and less invasive.

However, neither of these offers the definitive diagnosis of a CT scan, which is what Maria favours.

‘A CT scan saved my life — I want others to have that option, too,’ she says.