Breast cancer survival by teaching status of the initial treating hospital

grantor: University of TorontoThe objective of this study was to compare survival outcomes of women initially treated at teaching hospitals with those initially treated at community hospitals. The study cohort consisted of 938 women with confirmed node-negative breast cancer randomly selected from among those diagnosed in Ontario in 1991. Cox's proportional hazards model was used to control for the effect of patient and tumour characteristics and treatment received. Crude 5-year survival for women initially treated at teaching and community hospitals was 92.5% and 88.7% respectively (p = 0.067). Among women with tumours 20mm. There are a number of possible explanations for thew findings: patient populations may differ with respect to factors not controlled for in the analysis; there may be misclassification of cases with respect to tumour characteristics; or them may be differences in treatments administered.M.Sc