Thousands of cancer patients are missing out on access to radiotherapy and few people know it can help cure the disease, a charity has claimed.

At the moment, almost 40% of patients in the UK receive radiotherapy but around 50% could actually benefit.

Therefore, some 30,000 cancer patients may be missing out on the treatment - which Cancer Research UK says has “Cinderella status”.

A survey for the charity published found only one in 10 people knew that radiotherapy helps cure 40% of cancer patients.

According to Cancer Research UK, one of the problems with radiotherapy is that accessing the right equipment varies between hospitals and staffing is an issue.

Even patients who are offered radiotherapy can wait a long time for treatment and public awareness of the role it plays is low.

The charity said the UK lags behind the US and the rest of Europe in introducing newer, more targeted types of radiotherapy.

One of these is intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), which uses computers to ensure radiotherapy is targeted directly at the cancer tumour, thereby minimising damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

Its chief executive, Harpal Kumar, said services had improved but more needs to be done.

He said: “Radiotherapy has a key part to play in treating and curing around 40% of cancers so it’s vital there is good, fast access to this service.

“Radiotherapy has improved substantially over the last 10 years but there are vital areas that need to be addressed to help deliver the best treatment for patients.

“Raising awareness of the importance of radiotherapy is the first step to improving services for this undervalued treatment.

“It’s important that all areas of the UK offer the same opportunities for patients to have radiotherapy wherever they live.

“Careful and sustained planning is needed across the UK if we are to build a world-class service for radiotherapy for the future.”

Sir Mike Richards, the government’s national cancer director, said: “Delivering state of the art radiotherapy is a complex operation.

“We are now planning ways to boost services to meet the needs of future cancer patients so we can offer radiotherapy to all those who would benefit from it.”

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