A study suggests that monitoring longitudinal changes in routine blood tests can improve the identification of cancer in patients with unexplained weight loss.
Reader brief
Through the Reader lens: A study published in PLOS Medicine indicates that analyzing trends in routine blood test results, rather than just single abnormal findings, can help doctors identify cancer in patients experiencing unexplained weight loss. Researchers analyzed data from over 275,000 patients and found that these trends, when adjusted for age and sex, are more effective at predicting cancer. The authors suggest that implementing this method could improve triage for cancer investigations in primary care settings.
What to watch next
- Adoption of age and sex-adjusted longitudinal blood test tracking in primary care
- Integration of these calculation methods into standard laboratory reporting
What was said2
Attributed, verbatim. Every quote is checked against the article it came from. One that does not match is not shown.
Brian Nicholson
2 quotes“Blood test abnormalities should be interpreted after age and sex adjustment to improve triage for cancer investigation in patients attending primary care with UWL”
In the article
…PLOS Medicine suggest that monitoring changes in routine blood test results in patients with unexplained weight loss could help identify patients in primary care who would benefit from additional cancer testing. " Blood test abnormalities should be interpreted after age and sex adjustment to improve triage for cancer investigation in patients attending primary care with UWL ," authors wrote. "We show how blood test results are made more accurate for cancer by adding patient age and sex. This relatively simple calculation could easily be performed at the laboratory," author Brian…
“We show how blood test results are made more accurate for cancer by adding patient age and sex. This relatively simple calculation could easily be performed at the laboratory”
In the article
…from additional cancer testing. "Blood test abnormalities should be interpreted after age and sex adjustment to improve triage for cancer investigation in patients attending primary care with UWL ," authors wrote. " We show how blood test results are made more accurate for cancer by adding patient age and sex. This relatively simple calculation could easily be performed at the laboratory ," author Brian Nicholson, from the UK's University of Oxford, said. Researchers said that while abnormal blood test results, such as low haemoglobin or increased platelet counts, can provide clues about a patient's…