Patients over 60 at increased risk of emergency cancer diagnosis

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

According to a new study published in the journal BMJ Open, researchers have found that people over 60 years of age at an increased risk of being diagnosed with lung or colorectal cancer as an emergency in a hospital compared with younger people.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from over 20 studies that included more than 687,000 patients with colorectal or lung cancer.

Of those, more than 200,000 cases were diagnosed with cancer after an emergency hospital visit. Results showed than nearly 40% of of lung cancers and 25% of colorectal cancers in England were diagnosed during an emergency hospital visit between 2006 and 2010.

The findings suggest the importance to determine why some people are being diagnosed with cancer during an emergency admission.

Because survival chances are decreased in people diagnosed this way, further research is necessary to identify which patients are less likely to have their cancer diagnosed earlier, when patients have a better chance of survival.