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Health among long‐term survivors of breast cancer—an analysis of 5‐year survivors based on the Swedish surveys of living conditions 1979–1995 and the Swedish Cancer Registry 2000
Author(s) -
Bolin Kristian
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
psycho‐oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.41
H-Index - 137
eISSN - 1099-1611
pISSN - 1057-9249
DOI - 10.1002/pon.1189
Subject(s) - medicine , breast cancer , cancer registry , population , cancer , gerontology , demography , family medicine , environmental health , sociology
In this paper we examine health among breast cancer 5‐year survivors. We raise two questions: (1) how do the health level of this survival group compare to the health level of the general population; and (2) how have the health levels among these survivors changed over time. We found that 5‐year breast cancer survivors assess their health lower than the general population, and that having being diagnosed in a later year increases health compared to having received the diagnosis at an earlier point in time. This implies that screening and treatment of breast cancer have been successful. Further, we did not find any statistically significant effect of the length of the time spell since diagnosis on health. One reason for this may be that those additional individuals surviving over time as a result of improved treatment therapies have on average lower health levels than those who survived before more efficient medical technologies were introduced. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.