부산대학교 도서관

Simple Summary: Blood tests are commonly requested by doctors.Blood tests are done for many reasons and invesitgating symptoms or monitoring existing conditions are just examples. For instance, blood tests can also be done as part of a routine health checkup to investigate symptoms or monitor existing conditions. For instance, blood tests can also be done as part of a routine health checkup. Some clinical guidelines for doctors include recommendations to investigate for cancer if a blood test indicates results that are lower or higher than normal levels. These recommendations are only helpful for a small number of cancers, such as bowel or pancreatic cancers. A patient can have repeated blood tests, allowing doctors to monitor how blood test results change over time. These changes over time are referred to as 'trends' and may provide doctors with more information than the results of a single blood test. For example, noting a small drop in a steady trend could be more useful than waiting for the blood test to drop below a normal level. Until now, there has been no research regarding whether blood test trends can identify patients who should be investigated for cancer. We aimed to assess this possibility in this research project. Clinical guidelines include monitoring blood test abnormalities to identify patients at increased risk of undiagnosed cancer. Noting blood test changes over time may improve cancer risk stratification by considering a patient's individual baseline and important changes within the normal range. We aimed to review the published literature to understand the association between blood test trends and undiagnosed cancer. MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched until 15 May 2023 for studies assessing the association between blood test trends and undiagnosed cancer. We used descriptive summaries and narratively synthesised studies. We included 29 articles. Common blood tests were haemoglobin (24%, n = 7), C-reactive protein (17%, n = 5), and fasting blood glucose (17%, n = 5), and common cancers were pancreatic (29%, n = 8) and colorectal (17%, n = 5). Of the 30 blood tests studied, an increasing trend in eight (27%) was associated with eight cancer types, and a decreasing trend in 17 (57%) with 10 cancer types. No association was reported between trends in 11 (37%) tests and breast, bile duct, glioma, haematological combined, liver, prostate, or thyroid cancers. Our review highlights trends in blood tests that could facilitate the identification of individuals at increased risk of undiagnosed cancer. For most possible combinations of tests and cancers, there was limited or no evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]