General practitioners in the U.S. aren't as adept as they should be at identifying the signs, symptoms and types of tests needed to diagnose blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, a new survey suggests.
The survey was administered to 357 primary care doctors in 2006 by two groups affiliated with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control whose aim is to improve survival rates of patients with blood cancers.
Those surveyed showed they were unsure about what studies to order for patients who had symptoms and lab test findings indicative of blood cancer.
Three in four doctors indicated they were "not confident" or "somewhat confident" about educating their patients about conditions such as leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndrome.
For one question, concerning the monitoring of a 54-year-old Hodgkin's disease survivor for five years, only 44 per cent of respondents knew how to proceed.
On a more optimistic note, more than 50 per cent of doctors surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that long-term monitoring is critical in patients who have had these diseases.
The findings were reported Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Atlanta.
"Primary care physicians see a lot of patients with a variety of symptoms, often which are rarely life-threatening," said co-author Dr. Richard Wender, professor and chair of Family and Community Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, in a release.
"In the case of leukemia, the symptoms — anemia, lethargy, low-grade fever — can be over a spectrum of severity and often non-specific."
Wender said the survey shows many "education gaps. Yet many of these patients live a long time, and the primary care doctors have responsibility to help co-ordinate care."
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