Compared to many other diseases, diagnosing a brain tumour is fairly straightforward. Promptly detecting it comes down to being concerned enough about the early symptoms – which range from fatigue to seizures to personality change – to get an image of the brain. Either the tumour is there, or it isn’t.

But in 2016, the Brain Tumour Charity released a report on the treatment of brain tumour patients in the United Kingdom. It found that almost one in three of them had visited a doctor more than five times before receiving their diagnosis. Nearly a quarter weren’t diagnosed for more than a year.

Women, as well as low-income patients, experienced longer delays. They were more likely than men to see 10 or more months pass between their first visit to a doctor and diagnosis –and to have made more than five visits to a doctor prior to diagnosis.

You might also like these other stories in the Health Gap:

• Why doctors dismiss women’s pain

• Should we rename women’s body parts?

• The health risks of maturing early

One 39-year-old woman quoted in the report recalled: “One of the GPs I saw actually made fun of me, saying ‘what did I think my headaches were, a brain tumour?’ I had to request a referral to neurology. I went back repeated times to be given antidepressants, sleep charts, analgesia, etc. No one took me seriously.”