Agreement between patient's description of abdominal symptoms of possible upper gastrointestinal cancer and general practitioner consultation notes: a qualitative analysis of video-recorded UK primary care consultation data.

Abdominal symptoms that are well defined or communicated as 'pain' may be more salient to GPs than those expressed vaguely or as 'discomfort'. Variable documentation of abdominal symptoms in medical records may have implications for the development of clinical decision support systems and decisions to investigate possible UGI cancer.