Cancer Treatment Wait Times Grow Across All Cancer Types
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Tim Donahue, a surgical oncologist at UCLA and the study's senior author, said the consistency of wait-time growth across every cancer studied was the most striking finding.
- The study drew on the National Cancer Database from the American College of Surgeons, covering 2012 to 2023 and encompassing more than 2.7 million patients.
- Researchers narrowed the cohort to patients with stage 1 to 3 cancers deemed eligible for surgery at diagnosis, across six different cancer types.
- The team measured the interval between diagnosis and any first treatment — including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or other medical therapies — not just surgical delays.
- The waiting period carries clinical stakes: patients face fears that the disease is spreading or progressing to a point where therapies become less effective.
Why it matters: For the more than 2.7 million patients in the dataset, lengthening diagnosis-to-treatment intervals mean more time in which tumors may progress past the window where first-line therapies work best. The uniform pattern across all six cancer types points to a systemic bottleneck rather than a disease-specific issue.
Ask SkimNews
