RECORD numbers of cancers are being diagnosed early when they are more curable, NHS figures show.
Nearly six in ten of the 13 most common tumours were caught at stage one or two, the health service said.
It means they have not spread to other parts of the body and they can usually be destroyed.
Almost 121,000 out of the 206,000 cancers diagnosed in England between September 2023 and August 2024 were found early.
The 59 per cent rate was up from 58 per cent a year earlier and 56 per cent the year before that.
It includes bladder, breast, bowel, kidney, lung, throat, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, stomach and uterine cancers, as well as lymphoma and melanoma.
Together they account for three quarters of all cancer cases.
NHS England cancer director Dame Cally Palmer said: “Lives are saved when cancers are caught early. It’s really encouraging to see more people than ever being diagnosed at an earlier stage.
“There is still much more to do to save more lives and we will not let up in our efforts to catch more cancers earlier, where treatment is more likely to be successful.”
About half of people develop cancer at some point in their life and it is the cause of one in four deaths.
The NHS is pushing to catch more cases earlier as Britain is slower than many similar countries, meaning our survival rates are worse.
Three million people had an urgent cancer check last year, up by 100,000 in a year and 700,000 compared to 2019.
Top NHS cancer doctor, Professor Peter Johnson, said: “As we all live longer the NHS is diagnosing more cancers than ever before.
“If anyone is worried they might have signs or symptoms of cancer they should get checked at the earliest opportunity.”
