TUESDAY, Nov. 5, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Canadian researchers have found that about one in three people newly diagnosed with cancer experienced at least one emergency room visit in the three months before their diagnosis.

Many visits ended up being caused by cancer-related symptoms, noted a team led by Dr Keerat Grewalemergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

Unfortunately, many patients first learn that they may have a malignancy while being treated in a busy emergency room.

“The emergency department is not an ideal environment for managing patients with suspected cancer diagnoses,” Grewal said. “Emergency departments are regularly overcrowded and have limited privacy. Receiving a suspected cancer diagnosis in this context was described by patients as distressing.

His team published its findings on November 4 in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

Grewal and colleagues examined data collected by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Services (ICES) in Toronto. The data included more than 650,000 patients diagnosed with cancer between 2014 and 2021 in Ontario.

The team found that more than a third (35%) had visited an emergency department in the 90 days before receiving a cancer diagnosis.

In this group of patients, 64% had visited the emergency room once, 23% had gone twice, and 13% had three or more visits, the researchers found.

More than half (51%) of patients who visited the emergency room before a cancer diagnosis ended up being admitted to the hospital.

Symptoms were often linked to the underlying cancer: for example, people who were later diagnosed with cancer colon cancer often had symptoms of intestinal obstruction and abdominal pain, Grewal and colleagues said.

People with gastroesophageal cancer sometimes had emergency room visits related to gastrointestinal bleeding, difficulty swallowing, and abdominal pain.

People with brain cancer had a high chance of going to the emergency room before their diagnosis because of symptoms such as weakness, confusion or seizures.

The team noted that the Canadian findings are consistent with results from similar studies conducted in the United Kingdom and the United States.

More information

Learn more about cancer symptoms at American Cancer Society.

SOURCE: Journal of the Canadian Medical Associationnew version, November 4. 2024