Specialized care and survival of ovarian cancer patients in The Netherlands: Nationwide cohort study

Background: There is much debate on the necessity of regionalization of ovarian cancer care. We investigated the association between hospital type and survival of patients with ovarian cancer in The Netherlands. Methods: A retrospective, population-based cohort study was performed on all Dutch patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer from January 1, 1996, through December 31, 2003. We used data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry that were linked to mortality data from the Statistics Netherlands database to obtain the date and cause of death. Five-year relative survival ratios, defined as the r... Mehr ...