title: Social impacts of the work loss in cancer survivors.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  As cancer frequently occurs during the most productive years of life, our purpose was to estimate the cost of work loss of cancer survivors and develop interventions to minimize the loss.
  
  
  METHODS
  We estimated the cost of the work loss from all cancers resulting from patients' inpatient, outpatient, and non-treatment days. This was calculated with a new method, the product of the "employment rate coefficient × productivity coefficient," making use of data published by the Japanese Ministries.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The estimate of work loss on treatment days for all cancers was $1820.21 million in men and $939.38 million in women. In terms of disease classification, lung cancer was the largest cause in men, whereas breast cancer was the largest in women. On non-treatment days, the work losses because of gastric, colon, and lung cancers were large in men, while breast cancer was the largest in women and in total. The estimated loss for all cancers was $3685.506 million in men and $2502.565 million in women, when the product was assumed 0.5.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In Japan, breast cancer was considered the leading cause for cost of work loss, and the most influential cause when the product of the "employment rate coefficient × productivity coefficient" for breast cancer was assumed the same as the product for all other types of cancers. It is necessary to establish support systems for working cancer survivors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Breast Surgical Oncology, St. Luke's International Hospital, 9-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-8560, Japan. hideyama@luke.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Hideko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yamauchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Breast Surgical Oncology, St. Luke's International Hospital, 9-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-8560, Japan.
authors.forename: Chizuko
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nakagawa
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Public Health, 2-3-6 Minami, Wako-shi, Saitama, 351-0197, Japan.
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fukuda
mesh_terms: D000041:Absenteeism; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000191:economics* / Q000401:mortality; D000073116:Cancer Survivors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D004526:Efficiency; D004651:Employment / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000191:economics* / Q000401:mortality; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D012922:Social Change; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014478:Unemployment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Breast cancer; Cost analysis; Survivorship; Work loss