Return to Work and Mortality in Breast Cancer Survivors: A 11-Year Longitudinal Study

Zhe-Yu Yang, Wei-Liang Chen, Wei-Te Wu, Ching-Huang Lai, Ching-Liang Ho and Chung-Ching Wang ()
Additional contact information
Zhe-Yu Yang: Division of Family Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
Wei-Liang Chen: Division of Family Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
Wei-Te Wu: National Institute of Environmental Health Science, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli 350, Taiwan
Ching-Huang Lai: School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
Ching-Liang Ho: Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, School of Medicine, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
Chung-Ching Wang: Division of Family Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 21, 1-13

Abstract: Breast cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer in women, and it is a major cause of cancer death around the world. With the development of diagnostic methods and improvements in treatment methods, the incidence rate of breast cancer and the number of breast cancer survivors continue to simultaneously increase. We used national registry database to analyze the features that affect employment and return to work among breast cancer survivors. A total of 23,220 employees, who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer were recruited based on the Labor Insurance Database (LID), the Taiwan Cancer Registry (TCR), and National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) during the period 2004–2015. The correlations between return to work (RTW) and independent confounding factors were examined using Cox proportional hazards model. Survival probability was analyzed using the Kaplan–Meir method. After adjusting for confounding variables, cancer stage, chemotherapy and higher income were significantly negatively correlated with RTW. Among breast cancer survivors, RTW was found to be related to a lower risk of all-cause mortality in both the unadjusted and fully adjusted model. Patients who had RTW exhibited better survival in all stages. Work-, disease- and treatment-related factors influenced RTW among employees with breast cancer. RTW was associated with better breast cancer survival. Our study demonstrates the impact of RTW and the associated factors on breast cancer survivorship.

Keywords: breast cancer; return to work; survival outcome (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14418/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14418/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:21:p:14418-:d:962474

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().