GPs ignoring cancer warning signs in young people, says UK oncology expert

"GPs are ignoring cancer warning signs in young people, with too many referred for psychological therapy instead of screening, a leading oncology expert has warned.

The symptoms of young people repeatedly presenting with pain are too often ignored because there is still a lack of awareness among patients and GPs of how early onset cancer has increased, according to Dr Bhawna Sirohi, the president of oncology at the Royal Medical Society. This means that when symptoms are finally picked up, cases are more likely to be terminal, she added."

...

"She said that in her breast cancer clinic a lot patients had been referred for psychological counselling because they kept going back to their GP, but then six months later were diagnosed with breast cancer. “She keeps coming back with pain, a niggle, and they say ‘oh no it’s nothing to worry about, it’s pre-period, everybody has pain, don’t worry’.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/society...warning-signs-young-people-uk-oncology-expert

 

Wow, they're actually blaming patients for their terrible approach to medicine? Obviously if you implement a model that encourages to ignore symptoms and reduce testing you are going to miss out on many conditions. It's the classic throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You can't have the "let's psychologize everything" model without this as a consequence. No one can claim they couldn't know about this outcome, it is entirely part of the decision-making process, and they freaking made this failure systemic.

But patients cannot and do not need to receive more awareness about cancers because diseases cannot be felt. Only symptoms can be felt, and patients are reporting them, they're just being dismissed instead of properly investigated. The base rates of cancer have nothing at all to do with how a person suffering from new onset, especially debilitating, symptoms will go and see a GP.

It has everything to do with the formulas applied by healthcare systems, but that is 100% their responsibility and no one else. They did the classic of "let's trade some lives to make it seem like we're saving some money". This is what makes psychosomatic ideology morally and financially bankrupt: the savings are fake, while the suffering is very real.

There are always consequences to choices. It's well-known for example that implementing universal programs instead of means-tested ones will lead to slightly higher incidence of fraud, but not only massively higher benefits, those benefits almost always more than pay for the slight increases in fraud. You have to count the totals to see it, but it's obvious when you do. And this is just cancer increases, you can bet that there are far more, especially in autoimmune and other hard-to-diagnose conditions, where everything is still covered up.

And still they blame the people they fail as bearing some responsibility for choices they not only force on the patients, but it is often met with anger and confusion by the patients, since it's so obviously irrational and self-defeating. The patients reject it, the system keep turning them away or sending them to the wrong place. The truth isn't that GPs are ignoring those signs, they're instructed to do so, and medicine is a compliance profession. Why they follow bad orders while soldiers are expected to do the opposite, even in wartime, is a truly baffling ethical puzzle. The ethics of medicine really need to be updated, because they are wildly out-of-date.

 

By one of the few people that, if they are brave enough to do it and lucky enough to survive doing so, will have a chance of being heard rather than various mental justifications people use for writing it off

Bystanders are so important in validating patterns by speaking up or them being disappeared by not speaking etc.

 

This 'it was never any cheaper' needs to keep being hammered home, along with the money going in its directions vs no proof of it really significanly helping most patients - many of whom might have had significantly different lives and prospects if the 'standard care' which probably was cheaper or adjustments had been done instead etc. When you don't ban proper follow-ups and timeframes rather than relying only on short-term surveys with limited and leading questions vs 'did these people end up with another disease which this ideology or suggestion frustrated the treatment of'.

Too true, there was a paper somewhere (not from medicine unsurprisingly) about how in governement risk/cost should be added when assessing proposals because people tend to be over-optimistic and struggle to see the truth of what something might actually cost when it is their own initiative.

I'm not sure that what psychosomatic people propose even if someone jotted it on a fag packet what they are proposing to actually set up 'in the name of' e.g. send someone across and we'll charge for a whole course of e.g. CBT whether they find it useless after first session or not vs the alternatives they'd logically be able to think it wasn't more expensive either, instead of listening to their one-liner on their last slide claiming 'saves money at any cost [because apparently these patients are soooo expensive]...' types things.

You'd like to think that at least cancer would be an area where the bigotry could be put aside for the sake of them not feeling like medics if they missed it......but is a real biggie the lack of e.g. whoever people went to and got fob-offs never having red-flag retrospective informings, whether they are still treating them or not (like we had covid alerts it must be possible) in order that these basically go on said people's records in order that they can seek retraining where they feel there seem to be gaps vs sitting in blissful ignorance 'they reassured that woman/you man who was worrying about nothing'

 

All of it.

Especially yes, it is the Drs job to consider and investigate their patients for Cancers and not the patients job to hand them this option.

But I am quite sure many patients did gift wrap and deliver their diseases to their Dr and that that is the main reason that they were sent away banished into psychology. How dare they think they have a serious illness.