Improvement of The Time to Diagnosis for Adult Lymphoma Patients in The State of Qatar: A Retrospective Cohort Study-Based Approach

Abstract

Prior to diagnosis, patients with Lymphoma might not recognize their symptoms, while others would assume that there is a simple explanation, therefore, they do not need a medical consultation. On the other hand, some patients would experience multiple primary care visits, resulting in referral and diagnosis delay, consequently, they often present as emergencies. This research will be carried based on a retrospective cohort study, using adult Lymphoma patients data from the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) database in Qatar. Using tools and techniques from data analytics, statistics and operations management, the data will be analyzed in order to achieve the main goals including; assessing the stage at diagnosis levels, benchmarking them with other countries, identifying factors associated with diagnosis delay, investigating the effect of stage at diagnosis on patients’ survival, illustrating patients’ current pathways to NCCCR, proposing improvements to shorten Lymphoma diagnostic pathway and assessing their effectiveness.