The role of receipt and timeliness of treatment in socioeconomic inequalities in lung cancer survival: population-based, data-linkage study

Urban–rural differences in cancer-directed surgery and survival of patients with non-small cell lung cancer

“…Our findings therefore support calls for urgent action to address socioeconomic disparity in treatment7 10 24 35 and survival of patients with lung cancer 8–11 24…”

“…Potential confounders were determined a priori10 24 and were controlled in the model. We used likelihood-ratio tests to determine overall p values for categorical variables and calculated adjusted proportions for surgery receipt among urban and rural patients.…”

Lung Cancer Care Trajectory at a Canadian Centre: An Evaluation of How Wait Times Affect Clinical Outcomes

“…A systematic review from Olsson et al 9 found no clear evidence that a timely diagnostic pathway resulted in improved survival. Forrest 12 and Yilmaz 36 , with their colleagues, also reported that timeliness of referral and treatment had no effect on survival. In contrast, two other studies described a negative effect of not meeting timely care guidelines 14,37 .…”

“…Between 1998 and 2009, the British Thoracic Society 4 , the United Kingdom's National Health Service Cancer Plan [5][6][7] , the RAND Corporation 8,9 , the American College of Chest Physicians 10 , and Cancer Care Ontario 2 all published recommendations for target time intervals in the trajectory of diagnosis and treatment for lung cancer (Table i). However, although timely care can contribute substantially to quality of life and emotional well-being for patients, the literature concerning the effect of timeliness on other patient outcomes does not show a clear association between earlier initiation of anticancer treatment and improved survival [11][12][13][14] .…”

Deprivation, distance and death in lung cancer

“…Socio-economic inequalities have been shown to have a significant impact on survival for the large majority of cancers in adults in the UK,3 and many studies have reported lower lung cancer survival rates in patients of lower socio-economic status 4––7. There is also wide variation in treatment rates of patients with lung cancer by geographical region,1 8 9 and the paper by Forrest et al 10 in this issue adds to the broadly consistent finding of lower treatment rates in patients from lower socio-economic backgrounds 11. In addition, many patients with lung cancer die very soon after diagnosis, a significant proportion with a particularly poor prognosis first presenting to secondary care as an emergency admission,12 a route to diagnosis that is more common in patients of lower socio-economic status 13.…”