Servicio de Neumología Complejo Hospitalario Clínico Universitario de Santiago C/ Choupana, s/nES-15706 Santiago de Compostela, La Coruña, Spain.
Clin Transl Oncol. 2010 Dec;12(12):836-42. doi: 10.1007/s12094-010-0606-5.
The effect on survival of delays in the consultation, diagnostic and treatment processes of lung cancer (LC) is still under debate. The objective of our study was to analyse these time delays and their possible effect on survival.
A retrospective study has been performed on all patients in our health area diagnosed with LC (confirmed by cytohistology) over 3 years. The delay in specialist consultation (time between start of symptoms and the first consultation with a specialist), hospital delay (time between first consultation and start of treatment) and overall delay (the sum of the previous two delays) were analysed. The influence of each of these delays was calculated using Cox regression, adjusted for other factors.
A total of 415 patients were included. Of these, 92.5% were male and 75.4% were in stages III-B or IV. The overall delay gave a mean of 123.6 days, the delay in consulting a specialist 82.1 days and the delay in hospitalisation was 41.4 days. A greater overall delay or greater hospital delay was associated with longer survival. No relationship was observed between the specialist consultation delay and survival.
Globally analysing all the cases and all the stages with LC, it is seen that longer delays are associated with longer survival. This probably reflects the fact that patients with more symptoms are treated more rapidly.
肺癌（LC）的咨询、诊断和治疗过程中的延迟对生存的影响仍存在争议。我们的研究目的是分析这些时间延迟及其对生存的可能影响。
对过去 3 年内我们医疗区域内所有经细胞学和组织学确诊为 LC 的患者进行回顾性研究。分析了专家咨询延迟（从症状开始到首次与专家咨询的时间）、医院延迟（首次咨询到开始治疗的时间）和总延迟（前两个延迟的总和）。使用 Cox 回归分析这些延迟的影响，并根据其他因素进行调整。
共纳入 415 例患者。其中，92.5%为男性，75.4%处于 III-B 期或 IV 期。总延迟平均为 123.6 天，咨询专家的延迟为 82.1 天，住院的延迟为 41.4 天。总延迟或住院时间延长与生存时间延长有关。专家咨询延迟与生存时间之间没有关系。
从整体上分析所有病例和所有阶段的 LC，发现较长的延迟与较长的生存时间相关。这可能反映了症状更严重的患者接受治疗更快的事实。
