As cancer treatments have advanced and outcomes have improved, one aspect of cancer care in the US has consistently worsened over the last decade: the wait time for surgery.
According to a study in JAMA Surgery, patients with one of six types of cancer—breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal—have faced longer wait times for surgery than in 2012. Timeliness is considered a core metric of healthcare quality, and delays in cancer surgery have been linked to poorer outcomes, including reduced survival rates and increased patient anxiety and distress.
The findings of the new study are based on data from over 2.7 million patients who had been diagnosed with non-metastatic
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