Gender inequalities in the promptness of diagnosis of bladder and renal cancer after symptomatic presentation: evidence from secondary analysis of an English primary care audit survey

Objectives To explore whether women experience greater delays in the diagnosis of bladder and renal cancer when first presenting to a general practitioner with symptoms caused by those cancers and potential reasons for such gender inequalities. Design Prospective national audit survey of cancer diagnosis. Setting English primary care (2009–2010). Participants 920 patients with bladder and 398 patients with renal cancer (252 (27%) and 165 (42%), respectively, were women). Primary and secondary outcome measures Proportion of patients with three or more pre-referral consultations; number of days from first presentation to referral; proportion of patients who presented with haematuria and proportion of patients investigated in primary care. Results Women required three or more prereferral consultations more often than men (27% (95% CI 21% to 33%) vs 11% (9% to 14%) for bladder (p