Understanding prostate cancer survivorship relative to co-habitation.

Abstract

253 Background: Studies suggest that married men diagnosed with prostate cancer survive longer than single men. None of the published research shows why this might be the case. Nothing is known about how treatment choice satisfaction and aspects of the psycho-social experience might differ between single and married men. Our aim was to understand if there are any differences in key indicators which might influence survivorship between single and married or partnered men. Methods: 1,762 men diagnosed with prostate cancer completed a lengthy online survey during a one month in 2014. The men were randomly selected from a national Prostate Cancer support group network. We investigated compliance and satisfaction in their treatment choices, activities of life satisfaction, spirituality and overall life sentiment. We included questions relating to the length of time between diagnosis and the survey and the size and location of the respondents community. We stratified each question by whether or not a person lived alone or was married or partnered or lived in some other communal situation. Results: There were no significant differences in diagnosis years by living status. A higher proportion of people with prostate cancer who live alone get more than 3 days per week strenuous exercise than those who live in communal situations. 20.26% of men who live alone exercised seven days, while only 14.24% of the married/partnered group exercised as much We used the CORR procedure in SAS to determine if a correlation existed between answers to specific questions and whether or not a person lived alone. Very few response patterns were correlated with being alone. No question in the survey was able to produce a correlation greater than 0.31. A feeling of loneliness was most correlated with being alone (r = 0.302). Trouble urinating (r = 0.24134) and trouble moving one’s bowels (r = 0.16904) were also mildly correlated with being single. Conclusions: Our study shows that being married, partnered or single is irrelevant to prostate cancer survivorship. Our results suggest that we have to look for reasons unrelated to personal relationships and household composition to understand why married men diagnosed with prostate cancer hold a longevity advantage over single men.