The pathway to diagnosis and treatment for surgically managed lung cancer patients

Most lung cancer is diagnosed at an advanced stage, resulting in poor survival. This study examined diagnostic pathways for patients with operable lung cancer to identify factors contributing to early diagnosis.

Surgically treated lung cancer patients (aged ≥40, within 6 months of diagnosis), approached via the population-based Cancer Registry, with their primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists completed cross-sectional surveys assessing symptoms, diagnostic route (symptomatic or 'investigation' of other problem), tests, key event dates and treatment. Time intervals to diagnosis and treatment were determined, and quantile regression examined differences between the two diagnostic routes. Cox proportional hazard regression analyses examined associations between survival and diagnostic route adjusting for stage, sex and age.

One hundred and ninety-two patients (36% response rate), 107 PCPs and 55 specialists participated. Fifty-eight per cent of patients had a symptomatic diagnostic route reporting an average of 1.6 symptoms, most commonly cough, fatigue or haemoptysis. Symptomatic patients had longer median primary care interval than 'investigation' patients (12 versus 9 days, P < 0.05) and were more likely to report their PCP first-ordered imaging tests. Secondary care interval was shorter for symptomatic (median = 43 days) than investigation (median = 62 days, P < 0.05) patients. However, 56% of all patients waited longer than national recommendations (6 weeks). While survival estimates were better for investigation than symptomatic patients, these differences were not significant.

Many operable lung cancer patients are diagnosed incidentally, highlighting the difficulty of symptom-based approaches to diagnosing early stage disease. Longer than recommended secondary care interval suggests the need for improvements in care pathways.