Rural-urban disparities in use of post-lumpectomy radiation
Medical Oncology, 06/22/2012
Martinez SR et al. – Patients from near–metro and rural areas are less likely to receive radiation therapy (RT) following lumpectomy for breast cancer (BCa) than their urban counterparts.
Methods- The authors used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to identify women diagnosed with BCa treated with lumpectomy in the Sacramento area between 2000 and 2006.
- Patient counties were categorized as urban and near-metro.
- Multivariate logistic regression models predicted treatment with RT.
- Likelihood of undergoing RT was reported as odds ratios (OR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI).
- Of 7,953 patients meeting entry criteria, 5,858 (73.7 %) underwent RT.
- On multivariate analysis, patients from near-metro (OR, 0.66; CI, 0.59–0.75; P<0.001) and rural (OR 0.39, CI 0.30–0.52; P<0.001) areas had a decreased likelihood of undergoing RT relative to patients from urban areas.
