US wait times for cancer surgeries are getting longer and longer
Study finds wait times for cancer surgeries hit 10-year high.
Study finds wait times for cancer surgeries hit 10-year high.
The short version
- As cancer treatments have advanced and outcomes have improved, one aspect of cancer care in the US has consistently worsened over the last decade: the wait time for surgery.
- According to a study in JAMA Surgery , patients with one of six types of cancer—breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal—have faced longer wait times for surgery than in 2012.
- Timeliness is considered a core metric of healthcare quality, and delays in cancer surgery have been linked to poorer outcomes, including reduced survival rates and increased patient anxiety and distress.
What happened
The findings of the new study are based on data from over 2.7 million patients who had been diagnosed with non-metastatic stage I–III cancers requiring surgery between 2012 and 2023. Researchers led by cancer expert Timothy Donahue at the University of California, Los Angeles, broke that time frame up into four groups: 2012–2015, 2016–2019, 2020–2021, and 2022–2023 to see how wait times have changed over the period.
Why it matters
Wait times for all six cancer types increased over the entire period and incrementally between each of the time groups.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.