Clin Orthop Relat Res 2020 03;478(3):527-536
A. A. Smartt, E. S. Jang, W. K. Tyler, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA.
Background: Several recently published population-based studies have highlighted the association between insurance status and survival in patients with various cancers such as breast, head and neck, testicular, and lymphoma [22, 24, 38, 41]. Generally, these studies demonstrate that uninsured patients or those with Medicaid insurance had poorer survival than did those who had non-Medicaid insurance. However, this discrepancy has not been studied in patients with primary bone and extremity soft-tissue sarcomas, a unique oncological population that typically presents late in the disease course and often requires referral and complex treatment at tertiary care centers-issues that health insurance coverage disparities could aggravate. Read More