Presentation at computed tomography

As Medicare expands the use of computed tomography (CT) for diagnosing lung cancer, there is increased opportunity to diagnose lung cancer in asymptomatic patients. This descriptive study characterizes the disease-specific diagnostic and treatment services that patients with a positive diagnosis fol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 12; no. 7; p. e0181319
Main Authors Powell, Adam C, Mirhadi, Amin J, Loy, Bryan A, Happe, Laura E, Long, James W, Kren, Erin M, Gupta, Amit K
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Public Library of Science 14.07.2017
Subjects
Analysis
Cancer patients
Care and treatment
CAT scans
Diagnosis
Health aspects
Lung cancer
Thorax
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Summary:As Medicare expands the use of computed tomography (CT) for diagnosing lung cancer, there is increased opportunity to diagnose lung cancer in asymptomatic patients. This descriptive study characterizes the disease-specific diagnostic and treatment services that patients with a positive diagnosis following CT received, stratified by presentation at CT. 1,261 patients were included. Early treatment services were most common in the group with morbidities unrelated to lung cancer (13.7%) and least common in the cancer syndromes group (6.6%). Advanced treatment services were used by 47.3% of the cancer syndromes group versus 23.5% of the no diagnoses/symptoms group. The intensity of disease-specific diagnostic and treatment services varied by presentation at CT. Patients with no symptoms or morbidities at the time of CT less frequently received advanced interventions. Learning about the utilization patterns of others with a similar presentation at CT may help patients with positive lung cancer diagnoses engage in shared decision making and in norming their experiences against those of other similarly-situated patients.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0181319