[General practice and early cancer diagnosis]

About 85% of cancer patients present with symptoms to general practice. The health care system should be organised in a way that GPs are able to refer patients to timely and early cancer diagnosis. The GP works in an area where symptoms most often are benign and cancer is rare. Only a minority of the symptoms in the population are presented to the GP. The GP must refer many of these knowing that generally the positive predictive value is 2-10%. To be able to ensure the best primary cancer diagnostic pathway we need much more research on symptoms, use of diagnostics and the way to organise this in a health care system where every third citizen will get cancer.