These symptoms can indicate a wide range of conditions, from benign diseases to late-stage cancers, making timely and accurate diagnosis a significant challenge in primary care.
The study, published today in the Lancet Primary Care, tracked over 4,800 patients referred to the SCAN Pathway between 2017 and 2023.
SCAN was originally developed in Oxfordshire in partnership with NHS England, Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support; it aimed to accelerate and streamline cancer diagnosis for patients with symptoms that fall outside standard urgent referral guidelines. Since 2020, it has been adopted as standard care across the region and is part of the NHS's wider rollout of Rapid Diagnostic Centres nationwide.
Key findings:
- Over the six years tracked, 8.8% of patients were diagnosed with cancer, most commonly lung, pancreatic, breast, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and colorectal.
- An additional 10.9% received serious non-cancer diagnoses.
- 19.3% had clinically significant incidental findings, underscoring the complexity and resource demands of these pathways.
- Certain combinations of symptoms and test abnormalities significantly increased the likelihood of a cancer diagnosis. For example, abnormal CA125 levels (a protein found in the blood which can be used as a biomarker for detecting some cancers) had a 29.7% positive predictive value for cancer.
Read the full story on the Oxford Cancer website.