AJMC study finds that long-term cancer survivors have health and quality of life similar to other Americans of the same age and background.

People that have had cancer that survive their first four years after diagnosis do as well or better than other Americans of similar age and backgrounds. Those are the findings of a new study reported in The American Journal of Managed Care.® And they are good news given that, according to the American Cancer Society, cancer death rates declined by 23% between 1990 and 2012.

The study was conducted by researchers at Precision Health Economics. They found that based on a variety of health and well-being measures, long-term cancer survivors fared as well or better than the general population and compared to people fighting chronic diseases. The study also compared the same measures for long-term cancer survivors to those of people newly diagnosed with cancer.

The Health and Retirement Study, which was funded by Bristol-Myers Squibb, was conducted between 2004 and 2014 and looked at data from four different sets of people - those recently diagnosed with cancer (defined as less than four years ago), those who had survived cancer at least four years, those with a chronic illness (such as diabetes, hypertension, previous stroke, or heart or lung disease), and a representative sample.

One important note: the health and well-being of cancer survivors did depend on whether they had other health problems. Survivors with co-morbidities showed moderately higher healthcare utilization and spending and moderately lower self-reported health and employment. 

“Our study results are striking, given concerns that patients with cancer may experience a low quality of life,” the researchers wrote. “Although we do find that quality of life is reduced in the short term, we find that it solidly rebounds in the years after diagnosis, becoming comparable with or even better than that of others of similar age and demographic characteristics.”