BBC news – older women and ovarian cancer
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Only yesterday I happened to suggest that it might be unwise to use a beautiful young women (Emilia Fox) to raise awareness of ovarian cancer. My grounds were that it might give younger women the idea they were at particular risk of ovarian cancer and give older women the idea that they were not. It is the other way about.
Following on from yesterday’s post is news on today’s BBC website. ‘GPs slow to refer older women with ovarian cancer’ (they mean ‘suspected ovarian cancer’) quoting a new paper in the British Journal of Cancer.
Apparently they “found that women aged between 45 and 69 years tended to be referred for gynaecological investigation within ten weeks of coming to their GP with symptoms. For women aged 75 to 79 years, the figure rose to 20 weeks.” The women thought they had problems. We know this, they went to their GP. But the GPs somehow ….didn’t.
I doubt that GPs are avid consumers of national public awareness campaigns from the voluntary sector, which tend to be small scale and delivered with crossed fingers rather than directed by a well targeted plan, so I'm not suggesting the GPs were under Emilia's thrall. I do suggest that things go awry when a women (or a man) is older, when cancer is more likely. The need to exclude a myriad of other things that might be causing symptoms has to be satisfied first it seems. All sense of urgency disappears, along with the inclination to try and exclude the worst possibility promptly.
This result in older women red flags age related delays in access to many cancer services. There’s no logical reason why having ovarian cancer is the reason for delays. Delay in cancer referal means poorer outcomes, and poorer outcomes, lest we forget, is code for more ill health, shorter survival and death.
The Department of Health and health service researchers should look now at the referral patterns in suspected cancer for all older women (and men) and compare them with all younger women (and men). Must we now spend more time discovering this pattern anew, in each cancer, in turn? No we mustn't. But previous experience suggests we probably will.
