The Upper Gastro Intestinal (UGI) team have now launched their new Pancreatic Rapid Diagnostic Service (RDS) pathway at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. This is in line with the NHSE Long Term Plan to provide a personal, accurate and fast diagnosis service with excellent patient experience.
This new pathway was constructed over the last few months by the Upper GI and Corporate Cancer team.
The aim is to provide a model of rapid diagnosis to reduce the delay between the appearance of pancreatic symptoms and a confirmed diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
The introduction of our new UGI Advanced Specialist Practitioner (ASP) will now allow LTH patients to be clinically assessed within 1-2 days of referral, and urgent diagnostics to be requested that same day based on patient symptoms and clinical history.
Following diagnostic investigations, daily desktop reviews will be held by the ASP to assess and order urgent further investigations should a diagnosis of cancer be made.
The UGI team hold weekly meetings in collaboration with the specialist pancreatic treatment centre ELHT where patient’s treatment plans are discussed and agreed by both teams. Any patients requiring specialist surgery will be referred to ELHT immediately.
Treatment for patients requiring palliative or best supportive care will be provided locally at LTH by oncologists and local community teams.
By introducing this new rapid diagnostic process we aim to reduce the waiting times for our LTH patients on a pancreatic cancer diagnostic pathway and aim to provide a diagnosis of cancer or non-cancer within 28 days.
For our patients this new streamlined pathway will ensure that they are seen as quickly as possible, receive a timely diagnosis or are referred on where appropriate to the right service for further support or investigation, treatment or care.
