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Diagnostic Work-up of CUP: An Approach to Current Recommendations and Underlying Evidence

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Book cover Cancer of Unknown Primary

Abstract

The diagnostic work-up of CUP patients should be guided on one hand by the usually limited life expectancy of this patient group and on the other hand by the fact that CUP comprises a minority of patients with a clearly better prognosis if treated correctly. Hence, the diagnostic process should be fast and efficient, avoid studies whose results are not expected to alter clinical management, and focus on identifying patient subsets benefiting from specific approaches. We here discuss the implementation of novel methods into routine diagnostics, paying special attention to the fact that there are marked differences between different health care systems, e.g., regarding gene expression-based site-of-origin assignment, which can be widely offered to CUP patients in the USA but not in most other countries including Germany. Finally, we present our own practical approach towards the diagnostic work-up of CUP patients.

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Correspondence to Alwin Krämer .

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Krämer, A., Löffler, H. (2016). Diagnostic Work-up of CUP: An Approach to Current Recommendations and Underlying Evidence. In: Krämer, A., Löffler, H. (eds) Cancer of Unknown Primary. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22581-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22581-4_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22580-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22581-4

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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