Time to diagnosis of symptomatic gastric and oesophageal cancer in the Netherlands: Where is the room for improvement?

Background: An efficient diagnostic pathway and early stage diagnosis for cancer patients is widely pursued. This study aims to chart the duration of the diagnostic pathway for patients with symptomatic oesophageal and gastric cancer, to identify factors associated with long duration and to assess the association of duration with tumour stage at diagnosis. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study, using electronic health records of six routine primary care databases covering about 640,000 patients, partly linked to the Netherlands Cancer Registry. Symptomatic patients with oesophageal an... Mehr ...