Columnist Joan DelFattore, PhD, reviewed 59 studies covering more than 7.3 million patients with 28 types of cancer from a National Cancer Institute database. She found “significant differences in treatment rates between married and unmarried patients.” Most studies hypothesized that these differences were due to single people not agreeing to undergo surgery or that they have depression or that having a partner gives married couples a greater will to live.
Dr. DelFattore didn’t think the explanations held up. Just 0.4 percent of patients reject recommended surgery and 0.9 percent decline radiation. Unmarried patients were slightly more likely to refuse, but it was a small portion, she wrote.
“Still, the overgeneralized, unmitigatedly negative portrayal of unmarried adults is cause for concern, particularly when based on nonmedical research that is outdated or only tangentially relevant,” Dr. DelFattore wrote. “It is, in effect, an invitation to associate unmarried status with a need for milder treatment, without doing enough to ascertain whether an unmarried individual could handle a more aggressive approach.”
Read the full column here.
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