Missed Opportunities for the Diagnosis of Colorectal Cancer

Table 2

Patient and physician factors associated with missed diagnostic opportunity.

Variable	Patients who had missed diagnostic opportunity	Patients who did not have missed diagnostic opportunity	value
	()	()
Presence of comorbid condition	57 (62.0%)	87 (54.4%)
Colonoscopy prior to the one leading to CRC diagnosis	19 (20.7%)	27 (16.9%)
Other CRC screening tests prior to one leading to diagnosis	14 (15.4%)	33 (20.9%)
Number of symptoms	4.7 (2.6)	3.7 (2.2)
Mean number of physicians seen	3.8 (1.8)	2.4 (0.9)
Type of physician first seen
Primary care physician	64 (69.6%)	107 (66.9%)
Emergency room physician	21 (22.8%)	32 (20.0%)
Other (specialist, nurse, etc.)	7 (7.6%)	21 (13.1%)

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