The impact of cancer patient pathways (CPP) on long-term outcome after surgery for colorectal cancer has not been documented. This study aimed to investigate the effect of CPP on survival in patients who underwent surgery for colorectal cancer.
This was a retrospective cohort study performed in a single centre on prospectively collected data from a national database, the Danish Colorectal Cancer Group. In total, we reviewed 309 consecutive patients (145 females) with a median age of 70 years (range: 30-92 years), who underwent surgery for colorectal cancer between 2007 and 2009.
A total of 148 patients who underwent elective surgery after the introduction of CPP on 1 April 2008 had a decrease in the median number of days from referral to endoscopy (from 8 to 6, p = 0.001, from referral to oncological treatment (from 46.5 to 32 days, p