Study finds rural cancer patients seek help sooner than urban counterparts

When comparing urban and rural health care, the trends usually favor city dwellers. That makes the results of one new study on cancer treatment somewhat surprising, reports The New York Times.

"Urban residents are more likely to see a doctor later than those in the country are, a lapse that can make the cancers harder to treat," Eric Nagourney writes. "Writing in the November issue of The Journal of the American College of Surgeons, researchers said the findings confounded the assumptions of many in the medical community — including doctors who work in rural areas."

The study, conducted by Dr. Ian Paquette and Dr. Samuel R. G. Finlayson of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, relied on information from 300,000 cancer patients compiled by the National Cancer Institute, Nagourney reports. The results showed that even though rural residents were on average poorer, older and farther from medical services, they tended to seek treatment sooner than urbanites, and thus they had better rates of survival. (Read more) A summary of the study can be found here.