Medical and Surgical Oncologist Collaboration and Long-Term Outcomes Among Patients With Pancreatic Cancer.
More medical-surgical oncologist collaboration not tied to better pancreatic cancer survival
Medical and Surgical Oncologist Collaboration and Long-Term Outcomes Among Patients With Pancreatic Cancer.
Multidisciplinary collaboration is essential to deliver optimal care for complex diseases such as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma).
We sought to determine the association between medical and surgical oncologists' collaboration and long-term outcomes among patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Were excluded if a primary treating medical or surgical oncologist was not identified.
adjusted, collaboration made no difference to survival
A total of 2902 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients were seen by 1577 medical oncologists and underwent pancreatectomy from 736 different surgeons, representing 2295 unique surgeon-medical oncologist pairs.
The average age of diagnosis was 72 y (interquartile range: 68, 77), and approximately one-half were female (n = 1,447, 49.9%).
Two-thirds of patients (n = 1930, 67%) received care from a unique surgeon-medical oncologist pair (i.e., did not share any other patient).
Patients treated by the highest quartile of patient load volume of surgeons shared patients more frequently with medical oncologists than those treated by low-volume surgeons (n = 365, 38% versus n = 354, 19%; P < 0.001).
Collaboration between medical and surgical oncologists is not associated with long-term survival among patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma after adjustment for patient, physician, and hospital-level confounders.
These data suggest that patient and treatment-related variables largely drive long-term outcomes rather than interprofessional collaboration between specialists.