Women in the Midlands are more likely to survive breast cancer than in any other part of Britain, it was revealed yesterday.

Improvements in diagnosis, treatment and research have led to patients living longer after being told they have the disease.

In the West Midlands, 73 per cent of women live for at least a decade after initial diagnosis, and in the future two out of three patients could live for up to 20 years.

Two years ago Barbara Symonds, a retired secretary from Quinton, Birmingham, was diagnosed with cancer after she noticed slight puckering on her left breast.

"It was terrifying. At first I tried to ignore it and I tried to convince myself that it was nothing to worry about, but I knew that it was," she said.

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Within nine days she had had a mammogram and been examined by a consultant at City Hospital's Rapid Access Breast Unit - 24 hours later she was told she had breast cancer.

"It is absolutely earth shattering to be told you have cancer," said Mrs Symonds.

"My first reaction was that I should be dead by Christmas, but I discovered there is more help out there for cancer patients than you can possibly imagine."

The 58-year-old, who is a volunteer for the Pan Birmingham Cancer Network, had surgery followed by a course of radiotherapy at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Edgbaston. She is now taking tamoxifen.

Mrs Symonds, who has a 26-year-old daughter, urged women - and men - to be 'breast aware'.

Women diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1990s were given a 54 per cent chance of surviving for more than ten years, and 44 per cent of living for 20 years.

Nationally patients now have a 72 per cent chance of living for another decade, and 64 per cent face a 20-year survival.

Professor Michel Coleman, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist, said: "Overall long-term survival for women with breast cancer has improved dramatically over the past ten years, and we are now seeing even better survival statistics for women in their 50s and 60s."

He added that the improvement in survival rates for younger patients was much less dramatic, but had still increased by 14 per cent since the early 1990s.