Long-term follow-up of sickness periods in breast cancer patients primarily treated with surgery and radiotherapy or surgery only

Abstract

Morbidity as assessed by the number of sicklisted days was studied in 500 breast cancer patients. All patients were part of a randomized trial going on between 1971 and 1976 to evaluate the clinical effect of pre- and postoperative radiotherapy versus surgery only. Data on the number of sicklisted days and various forms of retirement from 1971 to 1984 was obtained by cooperation with the Swedish National Social Insurance Office. It was shown that the number of sicklisted days did not differ significantly between the study groups when the initial sickperiod--that is the time for operation, adjuvant radiotherapy and immediate recovery--was deducted from the total number of sicklisted days. The same result was also obtained when the time on disability pension was added. Our results do thus not support the hypothesis that adjuvant radiotherapy increases morbidity in breast cancer patients.