Can predictive factors determine the time to treatment initiation for oral and oropharyngeal cancer? A classification and regression tree analysis

by D ébora Rosana Alves Braga Silva Montagnoli, Vitória Ferreira Leite, Yasmim Silva Godoy, Vitória Marçolla Lafetá, Edmilson Antônio Pereira Junior, Akhilanand Chaurasia, Maria Cássia Ferreira Aguiar, Mauro Henrique Nogueira Guimarães Abreu, Renata Castro Martins This ecological study aimed to identify the factors with the greatest power to discriminate the proportion of oral and oropharyngeal cancer (OOC) records with time to treatment initiation (TTI) within 30 days of diagnosis in Brazilian municipalities. A descriptive analysis was performed on the var iables grouped into five dimensions related to patient characteristics, access to health services, support for cancer diagnosis, human resources, and socioeconomic characteristics of 3,218 Brazilian municipalities that registered at least one case of OOC in 2019. The Classification and Regression Tr ees (CART) technique was adopted to identify the explanatory variables with greater discriminatory power for the TTI response variable. There was a higher median percentage of records in the age group of 60 years or older. The median percentage of records with stage III and IV of the disease was 46. 97%, and of records with chemotherapy, radiation, or both as the first treatment was 50%. The median percentage of people with private dental and health insurance was low. Up to 75% had no cancer diagnostic support services, and up to 50% of the municipalities had no specialist dentists. Most munici palities (49.4%) started...
Source: PLoS One - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Source Type: research