Jump in Cancer Diagnoses at 65 Implies Patients Wait for Medicare, According to Stanford Study
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Jump in cancer diagnoses at 65 implies patients wait for Medicare, according to Stanford study:
A couple of years ago, Joseph Shrager, MD, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford School of Medicine, noticed a statistical anomaly in his practice. It seemed that patients were diagnosed with lung cancer at a surprisingly higher rate at 65 years old than, say, at 64 or 66.
"There was no reason rates should differ much between the ages of 63 and 65," Shrager said. He talked it over with his thoracic surgeon colleagues at Stanford who said they were seeing something similar. They wondered if the jump in diagnoses might be a result of patients delaying care until they became Medicare eligible at 65.
"If this were true, and patients were delaying screenings or treatments for cancer, it could impact their survival," Shrager said. A quick exploratory analysis of their own practices showed a twofold increase in lung cancer surgeries in 65-year-old patients compared with 64-year-olds.
"We decided to explore this, and its broader implications, in a larger population," Shrager said.
In a follow-up study published March 29 in Cancer, the researchers found a substantial rise nationwide in new cancer diagnoses at 65 - not only for lung cancer but also for breast, colon and prostate cancer. The four are the most common cancers in the United States.
Journal Reference:
Deven C. Patel, Hao He, Mark F. Berry, et al. Cancer diagnoses and survival rise as 65yearolds become Medicareeligible, Cancer (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.33498)
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