Stacey Baker

Prompt cancer diagnosis improves patient survival (Bird-Lieberman and Fitzgerald, 2009; Yasumatsu et al, 2023) and alleviates distress (Rowlands et al, 2022). Yet, for head, neck and oesophagogastric cancers, non-specific and poorly-localising symptoms such as dysphagia, hoarseness and chronic cough lead to ‘interspecialty’ referrals, which can delay diagnosis and reduce patient survival (Bird et al, 2020).