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Colombia's gastric cancer care highlights 'temporal rationing'
A new Lancet piece details the case of Pepe, a 45-year-old Colombian man whose gastric cancer diagnosis was delayed by two months of waiting for a gastroscopy. This 'temporal rationing' of care highlights how systemic healthcare delays directly impact prognosis and patient outcomes for critical conditions like advanced gastric cancer.
A new Lancet piece details the case of Pepe, a 45-year-old Colombian man whose gastric cancer diagnosis was delayed by two months of waiting for a gastroscopy. This 'temporal rationing' of care highlights how systemic healthcare delays directly impact prognosis and patient outcomes for critical conditions like advanced gastric cancer.
The architecture take
This isn't about some fancy new biomarker or a peptide with a long waiting list — this is about a man dying because the system made him wait. They're calling it 'temporal rationing,' which is just a fancy way to say you're losing time that could save your life. For Pepe, it was the two months waiting for a gastroscopy that likely made the difference between a treatable early-stage gastric cancer and a terminal diagnosis. I see this play out in so many ways when a system is under pressure, whether it's delayed mental health intake or long lines for basic diagnostics. Your body doesn't care about waitlists; it cares about what's happening right now. The slow drip of healthcare access, especially outside of high-income countries, means a lot of nervous systems are running on borrowed time, or worse, just running out.