Women who underwent pulmonary resections for lung cancer had significantly higher survival rates than men who had the same surgery, according to a study published in Chest.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden used the national quality register for general thoracic surgery to identify more than 6,500 people who underwent lung cancer surgery between 2008 and 2017. Results showed that women had a 27 percent lower death risk. During follow ups conducted after one, five and 10 years, there was an absolute survival difference of three, 10 and 12 percent, respectively.
Among the study population, men were more likely to be former smokers while women were more often never smokers.
The survival advantage among women was observed after adjusting for age, common comorbidities, socioeconomic status and other factors.
"There might be differences in clinical management of patients with lung cancer, some potentially favoring survival in women and others favoring survival in men," the researchers wrote. "Healthcare decisions might inadvertently be influenced by sociocultural conceptions and norms, which might lead to unequal clinical management."