WEDNESDAY, Jan. 10, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- When there's a question about whether a cancer therapy is beneficial, patients are more likely to receive the therapy that is available at the hospital where they are being treated, researchers say.
Previous studies have shown that the availability of a treatment influences how much it is used. For example, cardiac catheterization use in a given community is not influenced by the number of people who need it, but rather by the number of cardiac catheterization beds in that community.
In a new study to be published in the Feb. 15 issue of Cancer, researchers investigated whether or not radiotherapy cancer treatment use is affected by its availability at a hospital.
The researchers, led by Dr. Sandra Wong, of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan, reviewed the records of 10,198 patients who had been diagnosed with rectal or pancreatic cancer. Radiotherapy has been shown to be beneficial in rectal cancer treatment, but its effectiveness in treating pancreatic cancer is questionable.
The study's findings revealed that patients with pancreatic cancer were almost twice as likely to receive radiotherapy when their treating hospital had radiotherapy available, compared to patients who were being treated in hospitals where radiotherapy was not available. In contrast, the availability of radiotherapy had no impact on its use in rectal cancer patients.
"Our findings suggest that adjuvant radiotherapy for pancreatic cancer is either being over-utilized at hospitals with radiation facilities, or underutilized at centers without them," the study's authors wrote.
In the context of a controversial treatment for this type of cancer, patients are either being placed at unnecessary risk or "missing opportunities for better modality cancer treatment," the authors concluded.
More information
The National Cancer Institute has more about types of cancer.
