Wait times for surgery impact on survival study

 

Impact of wait times on survival for women with uterine cancer.


Elit LM, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2014.



Abstract

PURPOSE: To determine whether wait time from histologic diagnosis of uterine cancer to time of definitive surgery by hysterectomy had an impact on all-cause survival.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Women in Ontario with a confirmed histopathologic diagnosis of uterine cancer between April 1, 2000, and March 31, 2009, followed by surgery were identified in the Ontario Cancer Registry. Survival was calculated by using the Kaplan-Meier method. Factors were evaluated for their prognostic effect on survival by using Cox proportional hazards regression. Wait time was evaluated in a multivariable model after adjusting for other significant factors.

RESULTS: The final study population included 9,417 women; 51.9% had surgery by a gynecologist, and 69.9% had endometrioid adenocarcinoma. Five-year survival for women with wait times of 0.1 to 2, 2.1 to 6, 6.1 to 12, or more than 12 weeks was 71.1%, 81.8%, 79.5%, and 71.9%, respectively. Wait times of ≤ 2 weeks were adversely prognostic for survival after adjusting for other significant factors in the multivariable model, and patients with wait times of more than 12 weeks had worse survival than those who had wait times between 2.1 and 12.0 weeks.

CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report in a large population-based cohort demonstrating that longer wait times from diagnosis of uterine cancer to definitive surgery have a negative impact on overall survival.



PMID

 24276779 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

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Comments

  • Quilter_1
    Quilter_1 Member Posts: 117 Member
    Thanks for your post, it's

    Thanks for your post, it's most informative.  It makes me feel lucky, once again, at the speed of my diagnosis and my treatment.

    Linda

  • cmb
    cmb Member Posts: 1,001 Member
    Interesting article

    Thanks for posting this article. Looks like the surgical sweet spot is between 2.1 to 6 weeks from diagnosis, unless other factors require more immediate surgery.