Influence of marital status on the survival of patients with gastric cancer

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The influence of marital status on gastric cancer (GC) survival is controversial. The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between marital status and the survival of GC patients. METHODS: The data of current study was from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results database. We identified 18,815 GC patients between 2004 and 2009, who were categorized into married, never married, widowed, and divorced/separated groups. Kaplan-Meier analysis was performed to compare gastric cancer specific survival (GCSS), and Cox regression analysis was used to estimate the risk factors for different survival outcomes in four groups with diverse marital status. RESULTS: Married patients had better 5-year GCSS compared with patients who were never married, separated/widowed, or divorced. In stratified analyses by histological type and pathological differentiation, unmarried patients with gastric adenocarcinoma, signet ring cell carcinoma, moderately differentiated caicinoma, and poorly differentiated/undifferentiated carcinoma had an increased risk of cancer mortality. Widowed patients had the highest percentage of women and elderly, and were more susceptible to well and moderately differentiated gastric carcinomars and gastric adenocarcinoma with earlier TNM stage and lowest rate of surgery and radiation therapy. In addition, they also had the worst 5-year GCSS. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that unmarried GC patients, especially widowed patients, are at a high risk of GCSS. Additionally, the survival benefit is more significant among married GC patients in higher malignancy status.