Malik A, Wigney L, Murray S, Gerrand C H
North of England Bone and Soft Tissue Tumour Service, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne NE7 7DN, UK.
Sarcoma. 2007;2007:23870. doi: 10.1155/2007/23870.
The two-week "wait" target introduced in 2000 requires that patients with suspected cancer referred by general practitioners should be seen within two weeks. We reviewed patients who had been referred under this standard to the North of England Bone and Soft Tissue Tumour Service, to determine if the referral guidelines had been followed, and what proportion of patients referred under the guideline had malignant tumours. 40 patients were referred under the guideline between January 2004 and December 2005. Ten of these patients (2548%) had malignant tumours, compared with 243 of 507 (48%) of those referred from other sources. In 9 of the 40 cases, the patient did not meet the criteria for urgent referral. Although this target has focussed attention on shortening the time to diagnosis and treatment, prioritising patients referred from general practitioners has the potential to disadvantage those with malignant tumours referred from other sources.
2000年引入的两周“等待”目标要求，由全科医生转诊的疑似癌症患者应在两周内得到诊治。我们回顾了按照这一标准转诊至英格兰北部骨与软组织肿瘤服务中心的患者，以确定是否遵循了转诊指南，以及在该指南下转诊的患者中恶性肿瘤患者的比例。2004年1月至2005年12月期间，有40名患者按照该指南转诊。其中10名患者（25.48%）患有恶性肿瘤，相比之下，从其他来源转诊的507名患者中有243名（48%）患有恶性肿瘤。在这40例病例中，有9例患者不符合紧急转诊标准。尽管这一目标将注意力集中在缩短诊断和治疗时间上，但将全科医生转诊的患者列为优先诊治对象可能会使其他来源转诊的恶性肿瘤患者处于不利地位。
