Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate health service utilization in Spain among long-term breast cancer survivors and to compare it with that among women with no history of breast cancer.

Methods: Study based on the SURBCAN cohort includes a sample of long-term breast cancer survivors and a sample of women without breast cancer from 5 Spanish regions. Healthcare utilization was assessed through primary care, hospital visits, and tests during the follow-up period (2012 to 2016) by using electronic health records. Annual contact rates to healthcare services were calculated, and crude and multivariate count models were fitted to estimate the adjusted relative risk of healthcare services use.

Results: Data were obtained from 19,328 women, including 6512 long-term breast cancer survivors. Healthcare use was higher among breast cancer survivors (20.9 vs 16.6; p < 0.0001) and decreased from >10 years of survival. Breast cancer survivors who underwent a mastectomy were more likely to have a primary care visit (RR = 3.10 95% CI 3.08-3.11). Five to ten years survivors were more likely to have hospital inpatient visits and imaging test compared to women without breast cancer (RRa = 1.35 95% CI 1.30-1.39 and RRa = 1.27 95% CI 1.25-1.29 respectively).

Conclusion: This study shows higher use of health services in long-term breast cancer survivors than in women without breast cancer regardless of survival time.

Implications For Cancer Survivors: These results help to estimate the health resources needed for the growing group of breast cancer survivors and to identify risk factors that drive higher use of health services.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11764-021-01011-zDOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

breast cancer
44
cancer survivors
36
long-term breast
20
health services
12
breast
12
cancer
12
women breast
12
survivors
10
services long-term
8
study based
8

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!