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• Posted November 5, 2024

A Visit to the ER Can Often Precede a Cancer Diagnosis

Canadian researchers have found that about 1 in every 3 people newly diagnosed with cancer experienced at least one emergency department visit sometime during the three months prior to their diagnosis.

Many of the visits ended up being caused by symptoms related to the cancer, noted a team led by Dr. Keerat Grewal, an emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

Unfortunately, many patients are first told they might have a malignancy as they are being cared for in a busy emergency room.

“The emergency department is not an ideal environment to manage patients with a suspected cancer diagnosis,” Grewal said. “Emergency departments are routinely overcrowded and have limited privacy. Receiving a suspected cancer diagnosis in this setting has been described by patients as distressing.”

His team published its findings Nov. 4 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Grewal and his colleagues looked at data collected by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Services (ICES) in Toronto. The data included more than 650,000 patients diagnosed with cancer between 2014 and 2021 in Ontario.

The team found that more than a third (35%) had visited an ED in the 90 days prior to getting a cancer diagnosis.

In this group of patients, 64% had visited the ED once, 23% had visited twice and 13% had three or more visits, the researchers found.

More than half (51%) of the patients who'd gone to the ED prior to a cancer diagnosis ended up being admitted to the hospital.

Symptoms were often linked to the underlying cancer: For example, folks who were later diagnosed with colon cancer often had symptoms of bowel obstruction and abdominal pain, Grewal and colleagues said.

People with gastroesophageal cancer sometimes had ED visits related to gastrointestinal bleeding, difficulty swallowing and abdominal pain.

Folks diagnosed with brain cancers had high odds of visiting the ED before their diagnosis for symptoms such as weakness, confusion or seizures.

The team noted that the Canadian findings are in line with the results of similar studies conducted in the United Kingdom and United States.

More information

Find out more about cancer's symptoms at the American Cancer Society.

SOURCE: Canadian Medical Association Journal, new release, Nov. 4,. 2024