The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
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Investigating changes in prediagnostic healthcare utilisation can help identify how much earlier conditions could be diagnosed. Such 'diagnostic windows' are established for cancer but remain relatively unexplored for non-neoplastic conditions. ⋯ Evidence of changing healthcare use before diagnosis exists for many non-neoplastic conditions, establishing that early diagnosis is possible, in principle. In particular, some conditions may be detectable many years earlier than they are currently diagnosed. Further research is required to accurately estimate diagnostic windows and to determine how much earlier diagnosis may be possible, and how this might be achieved.