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Presenting symptoms of children with cancer: a primary-care population-based study

Jette Møller Ahrensberg1, Rikke Pilegaard Hansen, Frede Olesen

  • 1Section for General Practice, Department of Public Health, Research Centre for Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care, Aarhus University, Denmark. jette.ahrensberg@alm.au.dk

The British Journal of General Practice : the Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
|July 12, 2012
PubMed

Insights

Children with cancer often present with few, non-specific symptoms to general practitioners. This lack of clear alarm symptoms may delay diagnosis and timely referral for pediatric cancer patients.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Oncology
  • General Practice
  • Diagnostic Challenges

Background:

  • Limited understanding of how children with cancer present in general practice settings.
  • Early diagnosis through timely referral from general practice is crucial for pediatric cancer patients.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the presenting symptoms of childhood cancer in general practice.
  • To analyze general practitioners' (GPs) interpretations of these symptoms.

Main Methods:

  • Nationwide population-based study in Denmark (2007-2010) of children (<15 years) with incident cancer.
  • Questionnaire survey of 363 GPs regarding symptom presentation and interpretation, with symptom classification using ICPC-2.

Main Results:

  • GPs responded in 87% of cases and were involved in diagnosing 80.3% of children.
  • Children presented with few symptoms (average 2.4 per child), predominantly 'general and unspecified' (71.9%).
  • GPs interpreted symptoms as alarm in 20.2%, serious in 52.9%, and vague in 26.9%, with significant variation by diagnosis.

Conclusions:

  • Childhood cancer often presents with non-specific symptoms in general practice.
  • The low proportion of alarm symptoms (20%) and high proportion of vague symptoms (27%) may impede timely diagnosis.
  • Further research is needed to improve early detection of cancer in children presenting to general practice.
Abstract

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