Cancer and primary care: the clinical and research agenda

摘要

In the UK and Denmark we have a poor record in cancer outcomes.6,7 Some of this is due to late diagnosis — the exact proportion being hard to quantify, but probably around half. Not all late diagnoses can be assigned to primary care: patients may present late, the selection of patients for investigation is not straightforward, and access to investigations is variable. Indeed, the gatekeeper effect — of primary care being expected to rationalise access to specialist investigation — may be partly responsible, as areas of strong primary care seem to tally with poor cancer outcomes.8