Cancer treatment delay and 5-year mortality among patients diagnosed with common cancers from 2000 to 2017 in the...

Treatment delay can adversely affect cancer prognosis and public health. However, previous studies have not examined the association between cancer treatment delay and 5-year mortality risk for various cancer types in a single study population.

We used retrospective cohort data from 21 740 patients diagnosed with common cancers between 2000 and 2017, with mortality follow-up to 2022, from the Philippines' Department of Health-Rizal Cancer Registry to understand how treatment delay of <30, 30-90, or >90 days was associated with 5-year all-cause mortality risk, by cancer type and stage at diagnosis. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to obtain the risk ratio and 95% confidence interval for the associations.

After adjusting for confounding, patients with treatment delays of more than 90 days had significantly higher 5-year mortality risk (risk ratio = 1.09; 95% confidence interval: 1.04-1.14) compared to those with delays of <30 days. Treatment delay was significantly associated with higher 5-year mortality in breast and cervical cancers, but not for the other cancer types (P-trend < .05). There was also a significant association between treatment delay and 5-year mortality of non-metastatic but not metastatic cancer at diagnosis (P-trend < .05).

Our findings suggest that the 5-year prognosis of certain cancer types and non-metastatic cancer may be more adversely influenced by their delayed treatment, which will inform cancer control programs globally to reduce treatment delay and improve cancer prognosis.