Hello and thanks for your enquiry,

I am sorry to hear about your husband's situation, and can appreciate that this a difficult time.

In acute hospital settings, doctors prioritize face-to-face conversations to explain scan results immediately, especially when making sensitive decisions about a patient's care.

The formal "discharge summary" or consultant clinic letter is usually typed and sent to the GP after the patient is discharged, meaning it may not have been ready when you spoke with the doctor.

Under NHS guidelines, when hospital consultants write to a patient's GP about their care, they should aim to provide the patient (or their family/carers, with the patient's consent) with a copy of that correspondence. While a physical copy is not always handed to you automatically in the hospital ward, it is standard practice for a formal summary or letter to be written later and sent out to the GP, and the patient if they have signed up to receive copies of hospital correspondence. This can take several weeks though, for the communication to reach the GP surgery.

Because a biopsy was deemed unsafe and not in his best interests, there is no pathology or histology report. The main existing document is the radiologist's formal written report of the CT scan itself. This is not necessarily given to the patient but may be explained within the general summary letter from the hospital.

If your husband has the NHS App or an online GP services account, you can often view hospital consultation letters, discharge summaries, and test results directly under his digital health record. The hospital doctor will have sent a discharge summary or letter to your husband’s GP. You can call the GP practice receptionist and request a printed or emailed copy of the hospital letters and the CT scan report if it is on the system at the GP surgery.

I hope that this helps,

Best wishes,

Vanda