Cancer

Future Health Today: A pilot and feasibility study, with prostate cancer

Part of the Future Health Today program of work. The aim of this project was to expand the scope of analysis of existing project data to include focus on people with prostate cancer towards building a prostate cancer add on into the Future Health Today chronic disease identification and management platform. PAT010

Delays in access to treatment and patterns in primary care presentations and hospital visits for patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas

This project seeks to understand how delays to diagnosis and access to treatment can impact on outcomes for patients diagnosed with bone and soft tissue sarcomas. PAT031

Analysis of factors associated with outcomes and survivorship of lung cancer across the continuum of health care using linked primary care, hospital, clinical registry and population registry data

This project expands upon ongoing work of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre-funded Data-Driven Research Program: the first large-scale data linkage initiative of primary and acute services data aiming to improve outcomes in cancer care. PAT030

Platelet validation

This project examined the risk of cancer following detection of a raised platelet count in primary care, stratified results by cancer site and applied different thresholds for defining a raised platelet count. PAT1032_6

Primary care activity prior to cancer diagnosis in adolescents and young adults (PAPAYA)

This project examined GP activity in the two years before cancer diagnosis for different cancer sites and different types of GP activity to evaluate if potential opportunities for earlier diagnosis exist. It examined whether there are high-risk populations for recurrent presentations who may benefit from interventions to streamline diagnosis. PAT1032_7

FIB-4 as a predictor of advanced liver diseases

The FIB-4 index is a widely recognised marker for liver fibrosis and research suggests it could potentially be used as a risk indicator for other serious liver conditions, including liver cancer. This project investigated FIB-4 as a predictor of advanced liver diseases. PAT1032_8

Rural & regional disparities - prostate cancer project

Survival rates for regional men in Australia with prostate cancer are below their metropolitan counterparts. In Victoria, outcomes are worse for men diagnosed with Prostate cancer in regional areas, compared to their Metropolitan, state-wide and national counterparts. Treatment outcomes were examined to understand this disparity. PAT1032_5

Analysing disparities in survival outcomes and health care resource utilisation in colorectal cancer

This project utilised linked primary care data to analyse patient pathway prior to, during and subsequent to treatment in order to determine relationships between diagnostic intervals, survival outcomes, health seeking behaviour, clinical care and costs. PAT027

A validation study of a diagnostic algorithm to identify patients with colorectal cancer

A diagnostic validation analysis to create estimates of the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive and negative predictive values of the PIT–M3D algorithm for detecting CRC. PAT054

Assessment of existing early risk detection tools for pancreatic cancer used in primary care

Pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest survival rates due to its frequent late-stage diagnosis, making early detection critical. To aid in identifying underlying pancreatic cancer in primary care, several tools and guidelines have been developed. This projects will assess these tools/guidelines by applying them to a symptomatic cohort identified through general practitioner encounter notes in Victoria. PAT1032_9