IDENTIFY is the largest prospective, international, multi-centre study of patients referred to secondary care, with or without hematuria, for the investigation of suspected urinary tract cancer. Patient demographics, presenting features and diagnostic test results were recorded. Prevalence rates were calculated for each subtype of urological cancer and diagnostic test accuracies were calculated. There were 11,060 patient records collected from 128 hospitals in 30 countries from December 2017-2018). The distribution of sites is as follows:
This initiative is excellent and the authors should be commended for their effort. Further delineating diagnostic patterns among patients with occult malignancy will certainly inform future guidelines. Future work stratifying by region will be important.
The authors concluded that IDENTIFY provides contemporary cancer detection rates in a global population alongside diagnostic test performance for each cancer type. The extensive data will improve shared decision-making by developing predictive models to optimize cancer detection. These patient-specific pathways will reduce patient and healthcare resource burdens.
Presented by: Sinan Khadhouri, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Written by: Zachary Klaassen, MD, MSc – Assistant Professor of Urology, Georgia Cancer Center, Augusta University - Medical College of Georgia Twitter: @zklaassen_md at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19 conference in Barcelona Spain, March 15-19, 2019.