Survivors of young adult cancers had 1.5 times more hospitalizations than did controls in a population-based study spanning 20 years, Dr. Devon P. Richardson and coauthors at the University of Toronto reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Investigators compared a cohort of 20,275 patients enrolled in the Ontario Cancer Registry who were aged 20-44 years at the time of diagnosis, and had survived at least 5 years cancer free, with 101,344 noncancer controls selected from a roster of all individuals eligible for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. Over one-third of survivors were hospitalized during the 20-year study period, and the adjusted relative rate (ARR) of hospitalizations, compared with controls, was 1.51 (95% confidence interval, 1.48-1.54). Hospitalization rates were highest in survivors of upper GI cancers (ARR, 2.49), leukemia (ARR, 2.23), and urologic (ARR, 2.20) cancers, the investigators reported.
In the first three follow-up periods (5-8, 9-11, and 12-14 years after diagnosis), the hospitalization rate in survivors (per 100 person-years) stayed constant at 0.22, whereas the rate decreased significantly in the last two time periods: 0.17 at 15-17 years and 0.15 for 18-20 years after diagnosis (P <.0001). The hospitalization rate among controls was relatively constant during the entire time period, ranging from 0.12 to 0.14, they said.
“The results of our study show that 5-year survivors of cancer diagnosed during young adulthood will have morbidities that increase the number of hospitalizations in this cohort compared with control subjects for at least 20 years after diagnosis,” the authors wrote.
Read the full article here: J. Clin. Oncol. 2015 July 13 (doi:10.1200/JCO.2014.60.1914).
