Cancer and Marital Status: Singles may get Less Aggressive Treatment than Married People

Though you may have heard that married adults are more likely to survive cancer than singles, there is an aspect of that that has yet to make headlines: patients with spouses are more likely to get surgery or radiotherapy treatment.

When determining treatment, patients are often asked if they have adult children or spouses to help them cope and manage the side effects. A review of 59 studies based on the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), maintained by the National Cancer Institute, covering over 7.3 patients with 28 different forms of cancer showed reported significant differences in treatment rates between married and unmarried patients.

Unmarried patients were more likely to refuse, but the proportion was small. Of 278,015 unmarried patients whose physicians recommended surgery, 1,441 refused. For radiation, it was 1,055 out of 79,303. Conspicuously absent from these studies is any analysis of the physician’s role in recommending treatment.

Psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, author of “Prozac on the Couch,” says doctors view stereotyping “as bad, something we’re supposed to eliminate.” But judgements are inherent to human nature, and even doctors are humans. “Frame the discussion in terms of what the patient actually needs, rather than focusing on whether it’s provided by people in specific roles,” says Susan Brown, co-director of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research. “Our whole system is built around traditional family roles, and that doesn’t work for many people.”

See Joan DelFattore, Cancer and Marital Status: Singles may get Less Aggressive Treatment than Married People, Chicago Tribune, December 3, 2018.

Special thanks to Naomi Cahn (Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.