ArticleJournal of public health (Oxford, England)2018
The nature and frequency of abdominal symptoms in cancer patients and their associations with time to help-seeking: evidence from a national audit of cancer diagnosis.
Article in Journal of public health (Oxford, England), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Missed opportunities for earlier cancer diagnosis within specific pathways to emergency presentation.Future oncology (London, England) · 2025Article
- Baseline gut microbiome alpha diversity predicts chemotherapy-induced gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with breast cancer.NPJ breast cancer · 2024Article
- The presenting symptom signatures of incident cancer: evidence from the English 2018 National Cancer Diagnosis Audit.British journal of cancer · 2024Article
- A multi-method approach to selecting PRO-CTCAE symptoms for patient-reported outcome in women with endometrial or ovarian cancer undergoing chemotherapy.Journal of patient-reported outcomes · 2023Article
- Article
- Association Between Purchase of Over-the-Counter Medications and Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis in the Cancer Loyalty Card Study (CLOCS): Observational Case-Control Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Observational
- Article
- Article
- Understanding gastrointestinal cancer mortality disparities in a racially and geographically diverse population.Cancer epidemiology · 2022Article
- Influence of Diagnostic Delay on Survival Rates for Patients with Colorectal Cancer.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Observational
- Mammary tumors alter the fecal bacteriome and permit enteric bacterial translocation.BMC cancer · 2022Article
- Abdominal cancer symptoms: Evaluation of the impact of a regional public awareness campaign.European journal of cancer care · 2021Article
- Predictive values for different cancers and inflammatory bowel disease of 6 common abdominal symptoms among more than 1.9 million primary care patients in the UK: A cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2021Article
- Conceptual Framework to Guide Early Diagnosis Programs for Symptomatic Cancer as Part of Global Cancer Control.JCO global oncology · 2021Article
- Predictive Value of Carcinoembryonic Antigen in Symptomatic Patients without Colorectal Cancer: A Post-Hoc Analysis within the COLONPREDICT Cohort.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Article
- Risk of gastrointestinal cancer in a symptomatic cohort after a complete colonoscopy: Role of faecal immunochemical test.World journal of gastroenterology · 2020Observational
- Self-Care Behaviors of Ovarian Cancer Patients Before Their Diagnosis: Proof-of-Concept Study.JMIR cancer · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Raising awareness of possible cancer symptoms is important for timely help-seeking; recent campaigns have focused on symptom groups (such as abdominal symptoms) rather than individual alarm symptoms associated with particular cancer sites. The evidence base supporting such initiatives is still emerging however; understanding the frequency and nature of presenting abdominal symptoms among cancer patients could inform the design and evaluation of public health awareness campaigns. Methods: We examined eight presenting abdominal symptoms (abdominal pain, change in bowel habit, bloating/distension, dyspepsia, rectal bleeding, dysphagia, reflux and nausea/vomiting) among 15 956 patients subsequently diagnosed with cancer in England. We investigated the cancer site case-mix and variation in the patient interval (symptom-onset-to-presentation) by abdominal symptom. Results: Almost a quarter (23%) of cancer patients presented with abdominal symptoms before being diagnosed with one of 27 common and rarer cancers. The patient interval varied substantially by abdominal symptom: median (IQR) intervals ranged from 7 (0-28) days for abdominal pain to 30 (4-73) days for dysphagia. This variation persisted after adjusting for age, sex and ethnicity (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Abdominal symptoms are common at presentation among cancer patients, while time to presentation varies by symptom. The need for awareness campaigns may be greater for symptoms associated with longer intervals to help-seeking.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.