It has been hypothesised that poor cancer survival in Denmark is related to gate-keeping by primary care doctors (Vedsted and Olesen, 2011), although a Danish study found that a large proportion of delay in diagnosis was attributable to delay between the GP initiating investigations for cancer and the start of treatment (Hansen et al, 2011).
For non-STEMIs, some of the difference in inhospital mortality may be attributable to delays in diagnosis and decreased use of angiography shortly after MI.
For STEMIs, some of the in inhospital mortality difference between patients with COPD and non-COPD patients may be attributable to delays in diagnosis and use of and increased time to reperfusion.
Based on anecdotal experience, we believe that this phenomenon may have occurred due to the assumption that missing clinical histories were attributable to delays in typing, and hence not followed up by clinicians.
According to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations [ 31], one half of all 'sentinel event' cases of poor outcomes that were attributable to delays in therapy originated in the ED, with ED overcrowding playing a role in almost one-third of these cases.
These results had led us to consider that the high rate of free perforation in our study might be attributable to diagnostic delays and subsequent treatment delays, which can lead to poor prognoses [ 1, 17, 18].
And though some of this may be attributable to reporting delays, projected deal volume data for the whole of the U.S. and Canada (fourth chart down in the Q4 quarterly report) shows a years'-long downtrend.
The cause of this disorder is not clear: it could be a peculiarity of the trisomy 9p syndrome, but it may also be attributable to the important delay in bone age, as evidenced in patients 2 and 3. Patient 1 had normal pubertal development, which is likely due to the precocious GH treatment, which normalised the bone age/chronological age ratio.
