Introduction
People have the right to be involved in discussions and make informed decisions about their care, as described in NICE's information on making decisions about your care.
Making decisions using NICE guidelines explains how we use words to show the strength (or certainty) of our recommendations, and has information about prescribing medicines (including off-label use), professional guidelines, standards and laws (including on consent and mental capacity) and safeguarding.
Healthcare professionals should follow our general guidelines for people delivering care:
How the guideline is organised
This guideline has been organised into 3 separate sections to help healthcare professionals find the relevant information easily. There are recommendations for investigation and referral organised by site of suspected cancer, and tables of symptoms and investigation findings listed alphabetically by symptom. Either section should be used in conjunction with the recommendations on patient support, safety netting and the diagnostic process.
Recommendation wording in guideline updates
NICE began using standard wording to denote the strength of recommendations in guidelines that started development after January 2009. It does not apply to any recommendations ending [2005] (see update information for details about how recommendations are labelled). In particular, for recommendations labelled [2005], the word 'consider' may not necessarily be used to denote the strength of the recommendation.