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?:abstract
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Early GP referrals are associated with cancer patients surviving longer, according to a study looking at 1 4m patients with cancer in England 1 Researchers from King’s College London and Public Health England looked at patients diagnosed between 2011 and 2015 and assessed the association between the use of urgent referrals in general practice and cancer stage at diagnosis and mortality The study, published in the British Journal of General Practice and funded by the National Institute for Health Research, found that higher practice use of referrals for suspected cancer was associated with lower mortality for the four most common types: colorectal, lung, breast, and prostate The BMA has previously warned about a widespread failure to meet cancer waiting time targets in England and called on the government to investigate why this has happened 2 The paper reported, “Cancer patients from the highest referring practices had a lower hazard of death (hazard ratio [HR]=0 96;95% confidence interval [CI]=0 95 to 0 97), with similar patterns for individual cancers: colorectal (HR=0 95;CI=0 93 to 0 97);lung (HR=0 95;CI=0 94 to 0 97);breast (HR=0 96;CI=0 93 to 0 99);and prostate (HR=0 88;CI=0 85 to 0 91)
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