Separation, divorce more common in serious medical diseases when the woman is the patient

Women who are diagnosed with a serious medical disease such as cancer or multiple sclerosis are more likely to be left by their husbands than if the man were the patient, according to the results of a prospective study.

Although the study confirmed that the overall divorce rate among cancer patients was 11.6%, similar to that of the population as a whole, it also found that the divorce/separation rate when a woman was the patient was 20.8% compared to 2.9% when a man was the patient (P<.001).

Researchers at three medical centers enrolled 515 patients in 2001 and 2002 and followed them until February 2006. The men and women were in three diagnostic groups: malignant primary brain tumor (n=214), solid tumor with no central nervous system involvement (n=193), and multiple sclerosis (n=108). Fifty-three percent of patients were women.

The main finding was confirmed across all three disease categories: Women were the affected partners in 78% of the brain tumor, 93% of the general oncology and 96% of the multiple sclerosis cohorts.

The researchers conducted further analyses among those patients from the primary brain tumor cohort, which had the highest rate of divorce relative to the median follow-up time. Among those 214 patients, being a woman remained the strongest variable to predict divorce or separation (OR=10.8; P<.001).

When patients who remained married were compared to those who separated or got divorced, length of partnership (P=.0001) and age (P=.03) were the only two significant variables.

Glantz MJ. Cancer. 2009;doi:10.1002/cncr/24577.