Cancer Epidemiology
Volume 35, Issue 1 , Pages 83-89 , February 2011

The role of the doctor and the medical system in the diagnostic delay in pediatric malignancies

  • Motti Haimi

      Affiliations

    • Children's Health Center, Armon Tower, Clalit Health Services, Haifa, Israel
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +972 4 8351644; fax: +972 4 8351650.
    • ,
  • Monique Perez-Nahum

      Affiliations

    • Department of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Meyer's Children Hospital, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel
    • ,
  • Nili Stein

      Affiliations

    • Department of Community Medicine and Epidemiology, Carmel Medical Center, Haifa, Israel
    • ,
  • Myriam Weyl Ben Arush

      Affiliations

    • Department of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Meyer's Children Hospital, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel
    • The Bruce & Ruth Rapaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Haifa, Israel

,Accepted 8 July 2010.

References 

  1. The Israeli Center of Cancer Registration, Israel Ministry of Health.
  2. Pratt CB, Smith JW, Woerner S. Factors leading to delay in the diagnosis and affecting survival of children with head and neck rhabdomyosarcoma. Pediatrics. 1978;61:30–34
  3. Flores LE, Williams DL, Bell BA, O’Brien M, Ragab AH. Delay in the diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors. Am J Dis Child. 1986;140:684–686
  4. Saha V, Love S, Eden T, Micallef-Eynaud P, Mackinlay G. Determinants of symptom interval in childhood cancer. Arch Dis Child. 1993;68:771–774
  5. Pollock BH, Krischer JP, Vietti TJ. Interval between symptom onset and diagnosis of pediatric solid tumors. J Pediatr. 1991;119:725–732
  6. Bleyer WA. The impact of childhood cancer on the United States and the world. CA Cancer J Clin. 1990;40:355–367
  7. Greenwald HP, Becker SW, Nevitt MC. Delay and noncompliance in cancer detection: a behavioral perspective for health planners. Milbank Med Fund Q Health Soc. 1978;56:212–230
  8. Thulesius H, Pola J, Hakansson A. Diagnosis delay in pediatric malignancies. A population based study. Acta Oncol. 2000;39:873–876
  9. Bleyer WA, The US. Pediatric cancer clinical trials programmes: international implications and the way forward. Eur J Cancer. 1997;33:1439–1447
  10. Howard SC, Wilimas JA. Delays in diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancer: where in the world are they important?. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2005;44:1–2
  11. Spurgeon P, Barwell F, Kerr D. Waiting times for cancer patients in England after general practitioners’ referrals: retrospective national survey. BMJ. 2000;320(7238):838–839
  12. Wilkinson GG, Edgerton F, Wallace HJ, Reese P, Patterson J, Priore R. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Search&itool=pubmed_AbstractPlus&term=. Delay, stage of disease and survival from breast cancer. J Chronic Dis. 1979;32:365–373
  13. Neale AV, Tilley BC, Vernon SW. Marital status, delay in seeking treatment and survival from breast cancer. Soc Sci Med. 1986;23:305–312
  14. Katz SJ, Hislop G, Thomas DB, Larson EB. Delay from symptom to diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in Washington State and British Columbia. Med Care. 1993;31:264–268
  15. Ramirez AJ, Westcombe AM, Burgess CC, Sutton S, Littlejohn P, Richards MA. Factors predicting delayed presentation of symptomatic breast cancer: a systematic review. Lancet. 1999;353:1127–1131
  16. Amir Z, Kwan SY, Landes D, Feber T, Williams SA. Diagnostic delays in head and neck cancers. Eur J Cancer Care. 1999;8:198–203
  17. Allgar VL, Neal RD. Delays in the diagnosis of six cancers: analysis of data from the National Survey of NHS Patients: Cancer. Br J Cancer. 2005;92(11):1959–1970
  18. Salomaa ER, Sallinen S, Hiekkanen H, Liippo K. Delays in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. Chest. 2005;128(4):2282–2288
  19. Koyi H, Hillerdal G, Branden E. Patient's and doctors’ delays in the diagnosis of chest tumors. Lung Cancer. 2002;35(1):53–57
  20. Wallace DM, Bryan RT, Dunn JA, Begum G, Bathers S, West Midlands Urological Research Group . Delay and survival in bladder cancer. BJU Int. 2002;89(9):868–878
  21. Sainsbury R, Johnston C, Haward B. Effect on survival of delays in referral of patients with breast-cancer symptoms: a retrospective analysis. Lancet. 1999;353(9159):1132–1135
  22. Brouns F, Stas M, De Wever I. Delay in diagnosis of soft tissue sarcomas. Eur J Surg Oncol. 2003;29:440–445
  23. Widhe B, Widhe T. Initial symptoms and clinical features in osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2000;82(5):667–674
  24. Wurtz LD, Peabody TD, Simon MA. Delay in the diagnosis and treatment of primary bone sarcoma of the pelvis. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1999;81(3):317–325
  25. Arksey H, Sloper P. Disputed diagnoses: the case of RSI and childhood cancer. Soc Sci Med. 1999;49:483–497
  26. Eiser C, Parkyn T, Havermans T, McNinch A. Parents’ recall on the diagnosis of cancer in their child. Psychooncology. 1994;3:197–203
  27. Hamre MR, Williams J, Chuba P, Bhambhani K, Ravindranath Y, Severson RK. Early deaths in childhood cancer. Med Pediatr Oncol. 2000;34:343–347
  28. Aynsely-Green A, Barker M, Burr S, Macfarlane A, Morgan J, Sibert J. BMJ. Who is speaking for children and adolescents and for their health at the policy level?. 2000;321:229–232
  29. Dixon-Woods M, Findlay M, Young B, Cox H, Heney D. Parents’ accounts of obtaining a diagnosis of childhood cancer. Lancet. 2001;357:670–674
  30. Klein-Geltink JE, Pogany LM, Barr RD, Greenberg ML, Mery LS. Waiting times for cancer care in Canadian children: impact of distance, clinical, and demographic factors. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2004;43:1–10
  31. Mehta V, Chapman A, McNeely PD, Walling S, Howes WJ. Latency between symptom onset and diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors: an Eastern Canadian geographic study. Neurosurgery. 2002;51(2):372–373discussion 365-72
  32. Fajardo-Gutierrez A, Sandoval-Mex AM, Mejia-Arangure JM. Clinical and social factors that affect the time to diagnosis of Mexican children with cancer. Med Pediatr Oncol. 2002;39:25–31
  33. Wessels G, Hesseling PB. Outcome of children treated for cancer in the Republic of Namibia. Med Pediatr Oncol. 1996;27:160–164
  34. Brown RA, Rode H, Millar AJ, Sinclair-Smith C, Cywes S. Colorectal carcinoma in children. J Pediatr Surg. 1992;27:919–921
  35. Edgeworth J, Bullock P, Bailey A, Gallagher A, Crouchman M. Why are brain tumors still being missed?. Arch Dis Child. 1996;74:148–151
  36. Bonilla M, Moreno N, Marina N, deReyes G, Shurtleff SA, Downing JR. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia in a developing country: preliminary results of a nonrandomized clinical trial in El Salvador. J Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2000;22:495–501
  37. Metzger ML, Howard SC, Fu LC, Pena A, Stefan R, Hancock ML. Outcome of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in resource-poor countries. Lancet. 2003;362:706–708
  38. Haimi M, Peretz NM, Ben Arush MW. Delay in diagnosis of children with cancer: a retrospective study of 315 children. Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2004;21:37–48
  39. McGraw KO, Gordy S, Wong SS. How many subjects to screen? A practical procedure for examining multivariate normal probabilities for correlated variables. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1984;62:960–964
  40. Winer BJ, Brown DR, Michels KM. Statistical principles in experimental design. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1991;
  41. Howard SC, Pedrosa M, Lins M, Pedrosa A, Pui CH, Ribeiro RC. Establishment of a pediatric oncology program and outcomes of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia in a resource-poor area. JAMA. 2004;291:2471–2475
  42. Zajaczek S, Jakubowska A, Kurzawski G, Krzystolik Z, Lubinski J. Age at diagnosis to discriminate those patients for whom constitutional DNA sequencing is appropriate in sporadic unilateral retinoblastoma. Eur J Cancer. 1998;34:1919–1921
  43. Polnay L. Child health surveillance. BMJ. 1989;299:1351–1352

PII: S1877-7821(10)00135-9

doi: 10.1016/j.canep.2010.07.009

Cancer Epidemiology
Volume 35, Issue 1 , Pages 83-89 , February 2011

Article Tools

* Image Usage & Resolution