Background. The aim of this study was to examine which factors are related to patient delay in a cohort of consecutive patients with pharyngeal cancer and oral cancer and to determine whether the different stages of patient delay (ie, appraisal, illness, behavioral, and scheduling) were related to different tumor stages.Methods. Before treatment, 55 patients with pharyngeal cancer and 134 patients with oral cancer were interviewed about their prediagnostic period. To verify the data, a questionnaire was sent to the general practitioner and/or dentist and a close relative.Results. Patients with a delay of more than 30 days were significantly more often diagnosed with late-stage (T3 -T4) disease (pharynx, p = .01, odds ratio [OR] = 4.5; oral, p = .01, OR = 3.2). No sociodemographic characteristics were associated with patient delay.Conclusions. Prolonged patient delay was associated with late-stage disease for both patients with pharyngeal cancer and patients with oral cancer. Although for most patients the symptoms are vague or might look like a common cold or infection, the general public should be better informed about tumor symptoms. This may enhance earlier visits to a health care

Patient delay was significantly longer in cases of glottic cancer, but diagnosis at an early stage of the disease was more frequent among these patients than among patients with supraglottic cancer. Advanced supraglottic cancer probably has a late onset of symptoms. Thus, earlier intervention will probably not result in a significantly higher proportion of small supraglottic cancers being diagnosed.

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