Over the last two decades the lung cancer service at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has been incredibly well supported by grateful patients and their relatives, as well as by the team itself.

Vandana Jeebun, Respiratory Consultant and Departmental lead, said, patients and their families are so grateful for the care they receive from the team and we are grateful to them for everything they do for us.

The funds raised for the service have played a really significant part in helping us invest in state of the art equipment and training to benefit our patients.

Significant investments have included:

Lung-function test machines which have cost around £100,000 allowing complex physiological assessments such as cardiopulmonary exercise testing.

Tools used for early lung cancer diagnosis including radial endobronchial ultrasound processor (£70,000) and state of the art ultra-slim bronchoscopes (£30,000).

Investment in a high fidelity Symbionix manikin for training in bronchoscopy and endobronchial Ultrasound for lung cancer diagnosis (£80,000)

Several nebuliser machines (£35,000 over the last seven years) to help breathlessness

Dr Jeebun added: "The lung function test machines, for example, have been an instrumental tool for pre-operative assessment of patients' surgical fitness shown in the high number of referrals we get from trusts across the region.

The radial endobronchial ultrasound processor and ultra slim bronchoscopes are helping us to diagnose cancer earlier, paving the way for a new regional service for the northern cancer network.

And education tools like the high fidelity simulation manikin have helped us to train our teams to be the best they can be and rapidly improve their learning curves. We also host regional medical courses using the manikin, with excellent trainee feedback.

We want to highlight the help we have received and to thank everyone who has supported us together; you really have made an enormous difference to patients.

If you would like to help us continue and support our work, donating to this page allows you to do that and all money raised from this, as well as all other fundraising and donations, is put straight back into patient care.