What happens in general practice before an emergency lung cancer diagnosis?

What happens in general practice before an emergency lung cancer diagnosis?

From BJGP Interviews by The British Journal of General Practice

March 10, 2026 · 14 min · Season 4 · Episode 227

About this episode

The episode discusses the findings of a study on pre-diagnostic consultations in lung cancer patients.

Today, we’re speaking to Marta Berglund, a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at University College London. Title of paper: Pre-diagnostic primary care consultations and imaging in emergency-diagnosed vs referred lung cancer patients Available at: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0369 It has been postulated that emergency diagnoses of cancer (which occurs frequently and confers a poorer prognosis) may relate to suboptimal diagnostic management in primary care, but evidence to support or refute this hypothesis is sparse. We found that emergency-diagnosed patients with lung cancer were less likely to present with relevant respiratory symptoms and had fewer chest imaging investigations before diagnosis compared to patients diagnosed via referred routes, indicating an important role of disease factors in emergency diagnosis. Transcript This transcript was generated using AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Please be aware it may contain errors or omissions. Speaker A 00:00:01.200 - 00:01:06.690 Hello and welcome to BJGP Interviews. I'm Nada Khan and I'm one of the Associate editors of the Journal. Thanks for listening to this podcast today. In today's episode, we're…

People in this episode

Host: Nada Khan

Guest: Marta Berglund

Topics covered

  • lung cancer
  • diagnosis
  • primary care
  • emergency care
  • research

Keywords

  • lung cancer
  • diagnosis
  • primary care
  • emergency diagnosis
  • research study

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University College London, The British Journal of General Practice

Books & works: Pre-diagnostic primary care consultations and imaging in emergency-diagnosed vs referred lung cancer patients

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