Abstract

Background: Non-scheduled consultation is very frequent among patients with cancer, creating alterations and delays in programmed visits. We describe the incidence of non-scheduled consultations in patients with digestive cancer in our hospital.

Methods: Descriptive, prospective, non-interventional study. In a six-month period (May - December 2017), non-scheduled visits were chronologically recorded in the medical oncology consultation of digestive tumours of Hospital Juan Ramón Jiménez de Huelva. We performed a descriptive analysis of the variables collected through the statistical program G-STAT v.2.0.

Results: Patients with colon or rectal cancer generated most consultations (68,63%), followed by pancreatic (9,15%) and gastric (5,23%). Most patients had metastatic or advanced stage cancer (59,87%) and were under palliative or symptomatic treatment (58,82%). The most frequent reason for consultation was clinical symptoms (47,05%), followed by information demand (18,30%).

Conclusion: Non-scheduled consultations in cancer patients are frequent; they cause interference in scheduled consultations and not always resolved satisfactorily. We propose several measures to reduce the number of non-scheduled consultation in oncology.

Keywords: Digestive Neoplasm; Non-Scheduled Consultation; Advanced Cancer Patient; Tumoral Symptom; Oncological Emergency

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Citation

Citation: Matilde Bolaños Naranjo., et al. “Analysis of Non-Scheduled Consultations in Patients with Digestive Neoplasms".Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 4.11 (2020): 73-79.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Matilde Bolaños Naranjo., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.