People suffering one of the most common cancers could live longer, thanks to ground-breaking work by a doctor at Airedale General Hospital, Steeton.

Research by Dr Peter Turkington, a specialist registrar, has led to new guidelines designed to help doctors spot lung cancer quicker.

They have been included in the Government's lung cancer Management Pathways initiative designed to speed up the process from diagnosis to treatment.

And the findings are to be brought to the attention of the national cancer czar, Dr Mike Richards.

Dr Turkington, 31, who specialises in respiratory medicine, is a co-author of the paper, which has been published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal.

The research revealed that medics were not picking up the disease early enough.

Lung cancer is difficult to spot because it can be hidden by the heart and ribs.

His investigation, carried out when he was at Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham, near Hull, involved scrutinising the records of 58 patients - mostly men - confirmed as having lung cancer in 1997.

Only 28 patients had had previous X-rays which Dr Turkington and his two colleagues could examine. A total of 19 errors were found in 14 x-rays.

In one patient, abnormalities had been missed twice and the tumour of two other patients had been missed on three separate x-rays.

In 47 per cent, the abnormalities had been missed by the radiologist and the second most common reason for missing a problem was the GP not reading the x-ray report properly.

Dr Turkington said: "Our results have shown that the opportunity for an earlier diagnosis was lost in a considerable proportion of cases

"One of the benefits of picking up lung cancer sooner is that the patient will be given the diagnosis sooner, and any appropriate therapy.

"The Government is now pushing this area in its lung cancer management pathways initiative and every hospital has now to meet certain requirements.

"They have to see patients within a certain time and make a diagnosis within a time limit.

"Airedale already has a very good service and in the Government's review was seen to have excellent care for its lung cancer patients," he said.

Dr John Harvey, a spokesman for the British Thoracic Society, said: "The main risk for patients is that a tumour that was originally operable becomes inoperable because it's spread."

He said the UK needed more lung specialists and radiologists to read chest x-rays.