The frequency, nature and impact of GP-assessed avoidable delays in a population-based cohort of cancer patients

There is a growing emphasis on the speed of diagnosis as an aspect of cancer prognosis. While epidemiological data in the last decade have quantified diagnostic timeliness and its variation, whether and how often prolonged diagnostic intervals can be considered avoidable is unknown.We used data from the English National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (NCDA) on 17,042 patients diagnosed with cancer in 2014. Participating primary care physicians were...