Newswise — In a study published in the May issue of Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, investigators from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg use the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to study the effect of insurance status on survival following surgery for colon cancer. The authors studied over 58,000 cases of colon cancer diagnosed over the five-year period from 2007- 2012. They found that uninsured patients or those insured with Medicaid were more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to other sites (stage IV disease). In addition, when comparing 3-year survival after surgery, survival was higher for patients with insurance other than Medicaid (75.6%), than for those with Medicaid (57%) and the uninsured (61.2%).
Lead author Dianne Pulte states, “Differences in rates of definitive surgery and adequate lymph node dissection explain some of this disparity.”
Citation: Pulte D, Jansen L, Brenner H. Disparities in colon cancer survival by insurance type: a population-based analysis. Diseases of the Colon & Rectum61(5):538-546, May 2018. doi: 10.1097/DCR.0000000000001068
A prepublication copy is available upon request. Please email Margaret Abby, Managing Editor, Diseases of the Colon and Rectum, at dcrjournalmanagingeditor@gmail.com
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