Chest
Clinical InvestigationsDelays in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Lung Cancer
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The Finnish health-care system is based on public primary health care (general practitioners [GPs]) and on specialist health care in hospitals. Access to primary health care is easy, but in public health care a visit to a specialist is possible only by referral. The government covers the majority of the costs of health care. The district of Turku University Hospital consists of 58 municipalities that have their own health centers and a population of about 453,000 people. It is the only hospital
Results
Altogether, 133 new lung cancers were found. One patient record was not found, so 132 patients were included in this study. Of these, 95 patients (72%) were men, and the mean age of all patients was 69 years (Table 1). In total, 44 of the lung cancers (33%) were in the operable stage, and 25 patients (19% of all patients; 23% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer [NSCLC]) were operated on. The main reason for inoperability after the cancer was in the advanced stage was poor lung function.
Discussion
Studies calculating the growth of lung tumors based on mathematical models suggest that it takes 10 to 15 years from the appearance of the first cancer cell to the possibility of detecting a NSCLC by conventional chest radiograph. This indicates that the growth of a tumor is slow, and it seems unlikely that the prognosis is changed by the delay time of diagnosis. The time observed for lung tumors to double their volume ranges from 4 to 56 weeks, with a median time of 17 weeks.1011 With the
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