Pathways
lung cancer
LUNG CANCER
All patients over 16 years referred by their primary care doctor for a CXR attended half-day sessions that were blocked prerandomised to either IR reporting, where the reporting occurred before the patient left the department, or standard radiographer (SR) reporting within 24 hours. The radiographer report was independently authorised, with the radiographers acting as non-medical referrers and requesting the CT scan of the chest in line with local policy. This was followed later by radiologist-blinded second-read reporting to measure accuracy of the radiographer reports. All patients in the immediate arm of the study with a CXR suspicious for lung cancer were offered same day CT scan and those who declined were scheduled for another day. For this study, the time to diagnosis was measured from the date the CXR was performed to the date the diagnosis was confirmed, being the date of the diagnostic test or the date on which a clinical diagnosis was confirmed, if no pathological sample.