Delays in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Lung Cancer
CHEST JournalPublished 1 October 2005
Eija‐Riitta Salomaa, Susanna Sällinen, Heikki Hiekkanen, Kari Liippo
Citations277
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.83
SNIP1.83
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TL;DR
It is shown that long specialist treatment delays are not correlated with worse prognosis in patients with advanced disease, and the diagnostic and treatment delay times might be possible with little extra cost by a multidisciplinary team approach and by rapid access to carefully planned investigations, but decreasing the patient delay might be more difficult.
Abstract
Several reasons for long delays were found, but on many occasions patients underwent numerous consecutive procedures before a diagnosis of cancer was confirmed. Shortening the diagnostic and treatment delay times might be possible with little extra cost by a multidisciplinary team approach and by rapid access to carefully planned investigations, but decreasing the patient delay might be more difficult. This study shows that long specialist treatment delays are not correlated with worse prognosis in patients with advanced disease. In patients with more limited disease, the delay time may be more critical, and if curative treatment is the goal, the diagnostic process should proceed without needless delay to avoid a situation in which curable disease becomes incurable.
Keywords
Medicine
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