Resumen
Over 60% of cancer diagnoses in the United Kingdom (UK) are in patients aged 65 and over. It can be more complicated to identify and diagnose cancer in older people due to frailty. Frailty means that people are more vulnerable and often take longer to recover from health problems. Delays in diagnosis and treatment of cancer can lead to poorer patient outcomes. Using a database of patients from the Bradford district, we identified a group of patients who presented to their GP with signs suggestive of cancer, and who went on to be diagnosed with cancer, and calculated their degree of frailty using the electronic frailty index (eFI). We found that 1 in 5 of these patients were identified as frail and that frailty was associated with a significantly longer time to cancer diagnosis. We recommend further research takes place to explore reasons behind this delay in diagnosis.