Role of the general practitioner during the active breast cancer treatment phase: an analysis of health care use

Little is known about the actual involvement of the general practitioner (GP) during the active breast cancer treatment phase. Therefore, this study explored (disease-specific) primary health care use among women undergoing active treatment for breast cancer compared with women without breast cancer. A total of 185 women with a first diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer between 1998 and 2007 were identified in the primary care database of the Registration Network Groningen and matched with a reference population of 548 women without breast cancer on birth year and GP. Since diagnosis, patients with breast cancer had twice as many face-to-face contacts compared with women from the reference population (median 6.0 vs 3.0/year, Mann-Whitney (M-W) test p <0.001). The median number of drug prescriptions and referrals was also significantly higher among patients than among the reference population (11.0 vs 7.0/year, M-W test p <0.001 and 1.0 vs 0.0/year, M-W test p