Prevalence of invasive cancer in a large general practice patient population in New Zealand

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of cancer in the community is likely to be increasing due to an ageing population, implementation of cancer screening programmes and advances in cancer treatment. AIM: To determine the prevalence of primary invasive cancers in a large general practice patient population in New Zealand and to characterise the health-care status of these cancer patients. METHODS: Data were sourced from the patient management system of a large general practice (n = 11,374 patients) in a medium-sized Waikato town and from the New Zealand Cancer Registry dataset to identify patients diagnosed with cancer between January 2009 and December 2018. RESULTS: There were 206 cancer diagnoses in 201 patients; 35 cancers were diagnosed in 1887 Māori patients (1.9%) and 171 in 9487 non-Māori patients (1.8%). The age-standardised prevalence was 3092/100,000 in Māori patients and 1971/100,000 in non-Māori patients. The most prevalent cancers were breast, male genital organ, digestive organ and skin cancers. In May 2019, 81 of 201 (40.8%) patients with cancer were receiving only usual care from their general practitioner, whereas 66 (32.8%) were having their cancer managed in secondary care. Comorbidities were common, including hypertension (38.8%), gastrointestinal disorders (29.9%) and mood disorders (24.4%). DISCUSSION: Results suggest that there may be disparities in cancer prevalence between Māori and non-Māori patients, although this needs to be confirmed in other general practices. Furthermore, primary care appears to be responsible for most of the care in this patient cohort and workloads should be planned accordingly, particularly with the high incidence of comorbidities.