With so much advancement in medical research, most people who are diagnosed with cancer today won't die of it. A new study looks at how cancer survivors use other healthcare.

What the researchers wanted to know: Are people who have survived cancer less likely to get necessary medical care than people who haven't had cancer?

What they did: The researchers used a registry run by the National Cancer Institute, which has been linked with a list of Medicare claims, so they could find out what healthcare the people in the cancer registry had in later years. Ninety-four percent of the cancer registry patients over 65 have been connected with their later information in the Medicare database. For this study, the researchers looked at about 15,000 survivors of colorectal cancer, because it's common and has high survival rates. They were matched with randomly chosen Medicare patients who had no history of cancer.

What they found: For almost all of the indicators the researchers looked at, colorectal cancer survivors were less likely to get recommended care than were people who had never had cancer. For example, people with congestive heart failure, chronic lung disease, or chronic stable angina are supposed to see a doctor every six months; the noncancer patients were more likely to do so than the cancer survivors. The differences aren't huge—in a typical example, 27.1 percent of cancer survivors with diabetes went in for annual eye exams, compared with 30.1 percent of controls—but they are statistically significant. The 8 percent of survivors who only saw an oncologist were the least likely to get the care they were supposed to get (compared with those who saw only a primary care doctor or both a primary care doctor and an oncologist).

What the study means to you: The researchers say that with all of the focus on stopping cancer patients from dying of cancer, their other health needs have been ignored. Cancer is only one part of a cancer survivor's life. Also, they say that some cancer survivors may be expecting their oncologist to do the work of a primary care physician—a role oncologists may not want, or may not even realize some patients expect of them.

Caveats: The work used Medicare billing data, which may contain mistakes and do not include detail about the patients.

Find out more: Cancer was once the end of the line. Today, it can be managed and defeated. Read more at USNews.com.

Read the article: Earle, C.C. and B.A. Neville. "Under Use of Necessary Care Among Cancer Survivors." Cancer. Oct. 15, 2004, Vol. 101, No. 8, pp. 1712–1719.

Abstract online: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com