Geographic variation across veterans affairs medical centers in the treatment of early stage prostate cancer.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated geographic variation in the treatment of early stage prostate cancer in a national sample of veterans after widespread adoption of the prostate specific antigen test.


METHODS
Our sample consisted of 16,352 cases from the Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry that were diagnosed between January 1997 and December 1999 with stage I or II prostate cancer. We used a 2-stage nested logit model to compare surgery, radiation therapy and noncurative treatment among 4 geographic regions of the United States.


RESULTS
Multivariate analysis showed that patients in the West (referent group) had a higher OR of undergoing surgery than radiation compared with the Northeast, South or Midwest (OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.87, OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.76 to 0.98 and OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.64 to 0.87, respectively. Black men, men with lower grade and higher stage tumors, and unmarried men were less likely to undergo curative treatment and less likely to undergo surgery than radiation.


CONCLUSIONS
Geographic variation persists in patterns of care in men with early stage prostate cancer. However, this variation is limited to the choice between surgery and radiation rather than to the choice between curative and noncurative treatment.
Spencer
Benjamin A
BA
Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California-Los Angeles, California 90095-1738, USA. benjspencer@hotmail.com
Fung
Constance H
CH
Wang
Mingming
M
Rubenstein
Lisa V
LV
Litwin
Mark S
MS
D000368:Aged; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D012042:Registries; D014481:United States; D014493:United States Department of Veterans Affairs