Rural people more likely to die from colon cancer

Rural people with colon cancer are more likely to be diagnosed late and receive inferior treatment than their urban counterparts, according to a new University of Minnesota study. Rural colon cancer sufferers are also more likely to die from the disease. This is the first study of its kind to show that outcomes in colon cancer are affected by where a person lives, Tiffany Chao reports for ABC News.

The study focussed on more than 100,000 patients diagnosed with colon cancer from 1996 to 2008, with rural people making up 15 percent of the total. Rural patients were 4 percent more likely to get a late diagnosis, had 17 percent lower odds of receiving chemotherapy and had an 18 percent lower chance of getting lymph nodes removed during cancer-removal surgery, indicating that their treatment was most likely inadequate. Overall, rural patients were 5 percent more likely to die from colon cancer. (Read more)