Radiotherapy wait times for patients with a diagnosis of invasive cancer, 1992-2000.

Purpose: To study the wait times for cancer patients from the time of diagnosis to consultation with a radiation oncologist (T1), from consultation to radiotherapy (T2) and from diagnosis to radiotherapy (T3) in the context of treatment practices and measurement issues.

Methods: From 1992 to 2000, we studied 6585 Nova Scotian patients over the age of 24 years with a diagnosis of breast, lung, colorectal or prostate cancer who received radiotherapy within 1 year of diagnosis. Multivariate analyses examined associations between wait time and diagnosis year, age, sex, median household income (MHI), distance to the cancer centre and extent of disease.