Koo MM, Swann R, McPhail S, et al. - Researchers used population-level data from the English National Cancer Diagnosis Audit 2014 in this cross-sectional analysis in order to evaluate links between common presenting symptoms of cancer and stage at diagnosis. This study included patients aged 25 years and older suffering from one of 12 kinds of solid tumours (bladder, breast, colon, endometrial, laryngeal, lung, melanoma, oral or oropharyngeal, ovarian, prostate, rectal, and renal cancer). They took into account 20 common presenting symptoms and used logistic regression to determine links with the stage at diagnosis (TNM stage IV vs stage I–III). They noted a substantial variation by presenting symptom with regard to the proportion of patients diagnosed with stage IV cancer, from 1% for abnormal mole to 80% for neck lump. Although findings revealed a more strong link of specific presenting symptoms with advanced stage at diagnosis vs others, for most symptoms, diagnosis at stages other than stage IV was made in large proportions of patients. Early diagnosis interventions targeting common cancer symptoms were supported, countering concerns that they might be simply promoting the identification of advanced stage disease.