Married People Less Likely to Die From Melanoma

[Guest Nicole]

Married people are more likely than the unmarried to get timely diagnosis and treatment for malignant skin cancer.

Early detection of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is essential to effective treatment. The five-year survival rate for stage 1 disease is more than 98 percent, but by stage 3, the rate declines to 62 percent.

A study published in JAMA Dermatologyused a large cancer registry to catalog tumor stage and marital status in 52,063 patients diagnosed with melanoma. The population, average age 64, was 58.8 percent male. Almost 70 percent were married.

After controlling for age, sex, education level and other factors, the researchers found that 46 percent of married people went to a doctor at the earliest stage of the disease, compared with 43 percent of the never married, 39 percent of the divorced, and 32 percent of the widowed.

Patients who were never married were 12 percent more likely to present with a later stage cancer, the divorced 34 percent more likely and the widowed more than twice as likely. Results were the same for men and women.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/well/live/married-people-less-likely-to-die-from-melanoma.html