Marital status, delay in seeking treatment and survival from breast cancer

This study examined 10-year survival following a breast cancer diagnosis among 910 married and 351 widowed white women after adjusting for the effects of age, socio-economic status (SES), stage of disease and delay in seeking treatment for symptoms. All breast cancer patients were treated at M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston, Texas between 1949 and 1968. Marital status, age, SES, delay and stage were all univariate predictors of survival. Widowed patients were less likely to survive than married patients. Multivariate analyses using a Cox regression technique did not detect an effect of delay on survival when stage and the other variables were included. However, marital status differences in survival remained when all the other variables were included in the model. These data suggest that marital status differences in survival cannot be accounted for by patient delay in seeking treatment for breast cancer symptoms.