Are cancer survivors at an increased risk for divorce? A Danish cohort study

Abstract 

The purpose of this study was to determine the risk for divorce among cancer survivors. We conducted a nationwide, population-based study of 46,303 persons aged 30–60 years in whom selected cancers were diagnosed in 1981–2000 and 221,028 randomly sampled, cancer-free controls. Information on socioeconomic status, demographics and comorbidity was obtained from Danish administrative registries. We analysed the risk for divorce, adjusted for known risk factors, during follow-up and whether the socioeconomic and health status at the time of diagnosis had an impact on the risk for divorce.

Except for survivors of cervix cancer, who had an increased risk for divorce, we found that cancer survivors were not at greater risk for divorce than the general population (rate ratios (RR), 1.06; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.0;1.1 and RR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.9;1.0 for women and men, respectively). This finding shows that cancer survivors need not have unnecessary fears for their marriage.

Keywords: Cancer, Survivorship, Divorce, Social relations