Leading the research, Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox said: “We hope these new tools will help GPs with the difficult task of identifying patients with suspected cancer earlier and that this in turn could help improve treatment options and outcomes for patients.”
Online Calculator to Help Diagnose Bowel and Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer, which affects more than 8,000 people in the UK every year, has the worst survival rate for any cancer — almost three-quarters of pancreatic cancer patients die within a year of diagnosis. Catching pancreatic cancer in the early stages can offer a more optimistic prognosis for patients — however, with very few established risk factors and no reliable screening test available, it is also one of the toughest cancers for GPs to spot.
The research used patient data from 564 GPs practices to develop the algorithm and test its success at predicting which patients were likely to have pancreatic cancer, based on a combination of symptoms such as weight loss, appetite loss, and abdominal pain and risk factors such as age, chronic pancreatitis, smoking and diabetes.
It was successful in predicting 62 per cent of all pancreatic cancer diagnosed over the following two years which were in the top 10 per cent of patients predicted to be most at risk.
Colorectal cancer, or bowel cancer, is the second most common cancer in Europe as well as the second most common cause of cancer-related death. In the UK, 16,500 people die every year from bowel cancer and 36,000 people develop the disease. The UK has one of the poorest survival rates for bowel cancer in Europe, which is thought to be largely due to late presentation, delays in diagnosis and delays in treatment. Swift diagnosis can make all the difference — among patients where the disease is diagnosed early, the five year survival rate can be as high as 90 per cent.
Many of the major symptoms, such as rectal bleeding, weight loss, appetite loss, diarrhoea, constipation or abdominal pain are very common and can more often be linked to other less serious conditions, presenting GPs with a diagnostic challenge.
Based on using single ‘red flag’ symptoms such as rectal bleeding, doctors could miss 60 per cent of current bowel cancers.
For the research, academics used anonymous data from the same 564 GP surgeries to develop and test the colorectal cancer algorithm by looking at a combination of risk factors, including age, family history of bower cancer, anaemia, symptoms including rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, appetite loss, weight loss, diarrhoea and changes in bowel habits. The researchers also took into account the different risks affecting men and women.
The study found that the algorithm was very successful in spotting which patients would be most likely to develop bowel cancer over the following two years — 70 per cent of all bowel cancer patients subsequently diagnosed were in the top 10 per cent of patients predicted to be most at risk, The two studies used the anonymous data of patients aged between 30 and 84 years old who were all free from diagnosis or symptoms of the two cancers over the previous 12 months.
The new algorithms for pancreatic and bowel cancer could be incorporated into existing GP computer systems to alert doctors to patients who are potentially most at risk of developing the diseases.
They could support the work of GPs in reducing diagnosis times in line with current Government policy and the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI) — a public/third sector partnership between the Department of Health, National Cancer Action Team and Cancer Research UK. Evidence suggests that simply raising awareness of symptoms and speeding up diagnosis could save 5,000 lives per year without any new advances in medicine.
The study has resulted in two simple web calculators — one for pancreatic cancer and one for bowel cancer — which are designed for doctors but a simpler version could also be made available on the internet to raise awareness among the general public and to prompt patients with risk factors or symptoms to seek advice from their doctor.
Similar QResearch® scores have already proven effective in previous research in identifying patients at most risk of developing lung cancer, gastro-oesophageal cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, fractures, kidney disease and serious blood clots.
Reference for: Online Calculator to Help Diagnose Bowel and Pancreatic Cancer
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