Non-oncology doctors are finding it difficult to keep up with the pace of change in the field of oncology, a new Irish study has shown.

According to the findings, which were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2021, their knowledge is often not up to date, which can impact their communications with patients.

Researchers set out to assess doctors’ knowledge of current prognoses for different cancers. They asked 301 non-oncology physicians and 46 medical and radiation oncologists to estimate patients’ five-year survival rates for 12 of the most common tumour types across all stages of disease.

They were also asked about six clinical scenarios with a defined cancer type, stage and patient characteristics, such as age. The non-oncologist group was made up of GPs and various types of hospital consultants.

Their answers were compared with the most recent survival figures from the National Cancer Registry of Ireland (NCRI).

The study found that the non-oncology group was able to provide accurate estimates of all-stage survival for just two out of 12 cancer types. Meanwhile, when it came to the more realistic task of looking at specific clinical scenarios, the non-specialists significantly underestimated five-year survival across tumour types and were also more pessimistic than the oncologists overall.

“These results are in line with what we had expected because most physicians’ knowledge of oncology dates back to whatever education they received during their years of training, so their perceptions of cancer prognosis are likely to lag behind the major survival gains achieved in the recent past,” explained the study’s co-author, Dr Conleth Murphy of the Bon Secours Hospital Cork.

The study acknowledged that it is not realistic for non-oncology doctors to keep up with all the rapid changes occurring in the field of oncology. However, it did recommend that all physicians who routinely interact with cancer patients should familiarise themselves with the latest prognosis trends and statistics.

This is key because receiving this news you have cancer “is a traumatic experience” and patients usually have many questions. However, often, this news is not delivered by an oncologist, but by a surgeon or general medicine physician at the hospital.

“In our survey, we saw that one of the most vastly underestimated five-year survival rates among non-oncologists was that of stage 4 breast cancer, which has evolved considerably over time and now reaches 40% in Ireland. These patients must be spared the traumatic effects of being handed a death sentence that no longer reflects the current reality,” Dr Murphy said.

Details of these findings are published in the Annals of Oncology, Volume 32, 2021 Supplement 5.