Aim: To explore awareness of the increasing incidence of EOCRC, and to understand the potential barriers or facilitators faced by general practitioners (GPs) when referring younger adults to secondary care with features suspicious for EOCRC.
Results: Three main themes were identified regarding awareness, diagnostic and referral challenges amongst participating GPs. Awareness challenges focused on perceptions of EOCRC being solely associated with hereditary cancer syndromes and colorectal cancer being a condition of older adults. Key diagnostic challenges centred around the commonality of lower gastrointestinal complaints and overlap in EOCRC symptoms with benign conditions. Restrictions in age-based referral guidance and a GP ‘guilt complex’ surrounding over-referral to secondary care summarised the referral challenges. Young women were perceived as being particularly disadvantaged with regards to delays in diagnosis.
Conclusion: This novel research outlines potential reasons, from a GP perspective, for the diagnostic delays seen in patients with EOCRC and highlights many of the complicating factors that contribute to the diagnostic process.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37433643/ (Note 17 GPS involved)
Lynch Syndrome Ireland 