Not Working 3 Years After Breast Cancer: Predictors in a Population-Based Study

Abstract

Although reassuring that adjuvant treatments did not appear to play a role in survivors' not working, other aspects of the cancer experience might nonetheless have influenced the decision to reduce work effort after breast cancer.

Employment status and work-related difficulties in stomach cancer survivors compared with the general population

“…Families with a cancer patient may need to provide an emotional support system for them. Our finding that older age and being female were common correlates of postcancer work cessation also agreed with previous results (Lash and Silliman, 2000;Spelten et al, 2003;Drolet et al, 2005), but we showed that this was the case relative to the general population. The correlation with older age may reflect the fact that the cancer occurred at a time of life when patients may have already been thinking about retirement or working less (Lash and Silliman, 2000;Drolet et al, 2005) and that greater physical limitations increased the tendency to stop working.…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine work-and housework-related difficulties and the correlates of employment status for stomach cancer survivors vs the general population. Although comparisons with previous studies may not be appropriate because of differences in length of follow-up, health care access, and disability laws, our finding that nonworking was 10% higher in stomach cancer survivors was similar to the findings of studies of breast cancer survivors and prostate cancer (Bradley et al, 2002b;Bradley et al, 2005;Drolet et al, 2005). Our findings that stomach cancer survivors had difficulties in performing work due to increased fatigue and reduced workcapacity were also in agreement with findings from other studies (Stewart et al, 2001;Bednarek, 2002a, Short et al, 2005).…”

“…If the three multiple-choice items were not applicable, participants were asked to write in the reason for not working. We based most of the work-related questions on earlier studies (Maunsell et al, 2004;Yabroff et al, 2004;Bradley et al, 2005;Drolet et al, 2005;Short et al, 2005). Feasibility and comprehensibility of the full survey instrument -including work-and housework-related difficulties, reasons for unemployment, and socio-demographic and clinical characteristics -were pretested with 15 stomach cancer survivors in an outpatient clinic of the Korean National Cancer Center.…”

“…Many studies have assessed the employment status of cancer survivors (Maunsell et al, 2004;Yabroff et al, 2004;Bednarek and Bradley, 2005;Bradley et al, 2005;Drolet et al, 2005;Short et al, 2005;Bouknight et al, 2006), but only four of them included comparison groups (Maunsell et al, 2004;Yabroff et al, 2004;Bradley et al, 2005;Drolet et al, 2005), which are crucial to detecting cancer-specific effects. Furthermore, the majority of studies focused on breast (Maunsell et al 2004;Drolet et al, 2005;Bouknight et al, 2006) or heterogeneous types of cancer (Bradley and Bednarek, 2002a;Yabroff et al, 2004;Bednarek and Bradley, 2005;Short et al, 2005) and did not consider the survivors' ability to do housework. Little is known about the employment status and work-related difficulties associated with stomach cancer.…”

Return to Work After Early-stage Breast Cancer: A Cohort Study into the Effects of Treatment and Cancer-related Symptoms

“…Without adjuvant treatment, women returned to work after 7.2 ± 5.2 months. This is nearly two months later than the average 5.4 months reported by Drolet et al [20,21]. Patients who received adjuvant treatment were absent from work 7 to 11 months, whereas the contracted hours were reached 9 to 13 months after taking sick-leave.…”