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No Effect on Prostate Cancer Survival Seen From Longer Waits for Treatment: Presented at CSCI-RCPSC
By Louise Gagnon
Special to DG News
OTTAWA, ON -- October 4, 2002 -- The surgical waiting times for radical prostatectomy do not appear to affect patient survival.
The finding was presented here at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
Retrospective data gathered from Statistics Canada, the Ontario Cancer Registry, regional cancer center databases, and hospital discharge data, indicated that waiting times had increased from 72 to 115 days from 1980 to 1997. More than 6,700 cases of prostate cancer were included in the study entitled, "Description and Impact of Surgical Waiting Times for Prostate Cancer".
In total, 4052 patients were treated with prostatectomy. Of those, 745 were treated between 1986 and 1990. The other 3,307 were treated between 1991 and 1995. The mean follow-up period was 79 months post-prostatectomy. Age and socio-economic factors did not play a significant role in waiting times.
"The impetus to looking at these data was the sentiment that waiting times were having an effect on care," said Dr. Robert Siemens, the principal researcher and an assistant professor of urology at Queen's University. "That assumption has been put forth by people in the health care system and outside of it."
While the marked increase in waiting times would indicate stress on the province's health care system, the study suggests that stress did not result in patients with prostate cancer being shortchanged in care: researchers found no significant differences in prostate-cancer survival between patients with prolonged waiting times and those with shorter waiting times.
The results suggest that triaging of patients is occurring, according to Dr. Siemens, a physician in the department of urology at Kingston General Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. "The trend was toward decreased survival in men who had the shortest waiting times for surgery," he noted.
Dr. Siemens cautioned the results did not examine the severity of the cancer.
"The research does not look at the grade or stage of cancer," said Dr. Siemens. "Our future research will take into consideration those factors and give us a clearer picture of the effect of waiting times."
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