Gladys Langue, India Pinker, Valerie Moran, Sophie Pilleron
Abstract
Non-specific cancer symptoms are challenging to interpret in general practice. They can be attributed to a wide range of other conditions and delay the cancer diagnosis, increasing the risk of poor outcomes.
Introduction
General practitioners (GPs) are often the entry point into the healthcare system. They play a critical role in evaluating signs and symptoms and referring patients for further investigations when a serious disease, such as cancer, is suspected [1].
Methods
The protocol is available on Open Science Framework (OSF) [23]. This scoping review was prepared using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist (S1 Text) and Joanna Briggs Institute’s guideline [24].
Results
Out of 24,397 references, we included eight papers. The list of excluded full-texts with reasons for exclusion is available in S6 and S7 Tables.
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first scoping review to explore the attribution of NSS to a potential cancer by GPs. Despite the recognised challenge of NSS in general practice, our scoping review retrieved only eight studies, which suggests that this topic has received limited research attention.
Conclusions
This scoping review reveals that current knowledge remains limited on the factors influencing diagnostic reasoning in the context of NSS and cancer suspicion in general practice. However, given the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, this issue is likely to become even more relevant in the coming years, calling for further research on the topic.
Citation: Langue G, Pinker I, Moran V, Pilleron S (2025) Attributing non-specific symptoms to cancer in general practice: A scoping review. PLoS One 20(6): e0322264. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322264
Editor: Arunima Dutta, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Received: March 19, 2025; Accepted: May 26, 2025; Published: June 23, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 Langue et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), grant reference 16731054. For the purpose of open access, and in fulfilment of the obligations arising from the grant agreement, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
