Background: Patients with upper gastrointestinal malignancy often require admission to hospital with dysphagia or jaundice requiring therapeutic endoscopy. Endoscopic intervention is often effective permitting rapid discharge. An efficient service would permit rapid discharge for patients who are often at the end of life. We noted that a majority of patients in hospital under the gastroenterological oncology were admitted with symptoms requiring therapeutic endoscopy.
Methods: We conducted an audit cycle of the inpatient days before and after pathway implementation. A wait of 1 day was set as acceptable for patients with bleeding as defined by NICE guidance and we set an arbitrary standard of 2 days for patients without bleeding but requiring therapeutic endoscopy. Between the audit cycles, a pathway was built to accommodate these patients.
Results: Inpatient waits improved from a median of 3 days to 1 day. There was no difference in outcome between those presenting with bleeding and other symptoms or any difference in patients requiring different procedures.
Conclusions: Waiting times for endoscopy can be improved with the introduction of a targeted pathway of cancer patients. Further issues including cost, quality of life and nutrition require further intervention.
Keywords: Audit cycle; Endoscopic procedures; Gastrointestinal oncology; Waiting times.