Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2009 Oct;117(5):541-6.
doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0722.2009.00672.x.

Is diagnostic delay related to advanced-stage oral cancer? A meta-analysis

Iria Gómez  1 , Juan Seoane, Pablo Varela-Centelles, Pedro Diz, Bahi Takkouche
Affiliations
Review

Is diagnostic delay related to advanced-stage oral cancer? A meta-analysis

Iria Gómez et al. Eur J Oral Sci. 2009 Oct.

Abstract

Diagnostic delay in oropharyngeal cancer may be associated with poor prognosis. As controversy exists on this topic because of contradictory results, the aim of this study was to perform a systematic review of the relationship between total diagnostic delay and advanced disease stages. A systematic search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and ISI proceedings was made to identify observational studies that provided relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for patients with confirmed pathological diagnosis. The outcome of interest was disease stage (TNM classification), while the exposure of interest was the total diagnostic delay. The study-specific adjusted log RRs for cohort studies were weighted by the inverse of their variance to compute a pooled RR and its 95% CI. The fixed-effects pooled RR of advanced stages of oropharyngeal cancer when diagnostic delay is present was 1.32 (95% CI: 1.07-1.62). This association was stronger when the analysis was restricted to oral cancer (pooled RR: 1.47; 95% CI: 1.09-1.99) and when delay was longer than 1 month (pooled RR: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.26-2.77). The probability for patients with delayed diagnosis to present an advanced-stage tumour at diagnosis was significantly higher than that of patients with no delay in diagnosis. However, new prospective studies with strict methodology are needed to shed more light on this association.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles