Cancer guidelines may improve diagnosis rates

“Doctors to get more help to spot cancer early,” The Guardian reports. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced new revised draft guidelines that may help GPs pick up on possible early warning signs of cancer. The aim of the draft guidelines is to improve early cancer diagnosis in children, young people and adults of all ages. The draft guidelines have been primarily written for GPs and are an update of the 2005 guidelines that were last partially updated in 2011. What are the possible early warning signs of cancer?It is misguided to think of cancer as a single disease. Cancer is an umbrella term for a wide range of different conditions, in the same way as the term “infection”.With that in mind, specific cancers can present with a wide range of symptoms, most of which are similar to trivial conditions, such as indigestion or a sprained joint.What you need to watch out for are symptoms that are: persistent – last for more than two weeks unexplained – there seems to be no logical reason why a symptom(s) developsSpecific red flags you need to watch out for include: a cough that lasts longer than three weeks unexplained and persistent changes in bowel habits, such as chronic diarrhoea or constipation unusual bleeding, such as noticing blood in your stools or urine you notice an unusual, irregular and possible itchy mole on your skin unexplained weight lossRead more about possible early warning signs and sympto...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Medical practice QA articles Source Type: news