A cancer diagnosis is preceded by a visit to the emergency department in about a third of cases Often the symptoms that drive a person to visit the ED are caused by the underlying cancer It can be very 'distressing' to get your cancer diagnosis in a crowded emergency department, one researcher noted TUESDAY, Nov. 5, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- 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 (.
