Emergency alert

Doctors see rise in patients being diagnosed with cancer in the ER

- MEGAN OGILVIE

Dr. Keerat Grewal pointed to Canada’s family medicine crisis as one reason why patients are not being diagnosed with cancer until they visit an ER.

On a recent 12-hour shift, Dr. Kyle Vojdani diagnosed three patients with cancer.

Like most evenings, it was busy in Michael Garron Hospital’s emergency department: A crowd of patients waiting to be seen. Physicians and nurses rushing between cases. Sick patients, some critical, waiting in hallways for a hospital bed.

Amid the bustle, Vojdani, chief and medical director of the department, had to find the time — and the words — to tell each of the three that their tests pointed to cancer.

One of the patients, a man who had no family doctor and who could no longer wait to get care for his symptoms, had metastatic disease — the cancer had already spread to other parts of his body.

“You’re looking at the CT scan and it doesn’t say somebody has a treatable diagnosis like appendicitis,” Vojdani said. “Then you’re thinking, ‘How do I sit down with this person and their family in this unbelievably busy space and provide them with a life-altering diagnosis?’ ”

Across Canada, doctors are reporting a similar troubling trend, saying an increasing number of patients are receiving a cancer diagnosis in emergency departments in yet another symptom of a health system under pressure. Patients, they say, are forced to go to emergency departments for help because a family doctor shortage means they cannot easily get care anywhere else.