Abstract
Background: Little is known about the current status of patients newly diagnosed with cancer hidden among emergency diseases admitted to an acute care hospital that is not a designated cancer hospital.
Objective: To investigate the current status of patients with undiagnosed cancer who were brought by ambulance to the critical care and emergency center of our hospital.
Setting/Participants: Patients with undiagnosed cancer who presented to our emergency department from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2021 were eligible. We analyzed the patients’ characteristics, chief complaint, diagnosis and days to diagnosis, length of hospitalization, treatment, and outcome.
Results: Among 19,216 patients transported by ambulance, 58 (0.30%) were newly diagnosed with cancer. Many of the patients were elderly, and advanced cancer patients accounted for nearly half of the patients. The most common chief complaints were dyspnea and fever. The most common cancers were lung cancer, colorectal cancer, urologic cancer, and hematologic malignancies, in that order. Twenty patients (34.5%) were treated, 31 (53.4%) received best supportive care, and 7 (12.1%) were transferred for treatment.
Conclusions: In total, 58 (0.30%) emergency patients were newly diagnosed with cancer. We consider that one of our tasks is to further improve diagnostic accuracy. Because of the limited number of departments in our hospital, one of the challenges is to improve the accuracy of diagnosis in order not to delay the transfer of patients for treatment.
