Underuse of long-term routine hospital follow-up care in patients with a history of breast cancer?

Abstract Background After primary treatment for breast cancer, patients are recommended to use hospital follow-up care routinely. Long-term data on the utilization of this follow-up care are relatively rare. Methods Information regarding the utilization of routine hospital follow-up care was retrieved from hospital documents of 662 patients treated for breast cancer. Utilization of hospital follow-up care was defined as the use of follow-up care according to the guidelines in that period of time. Determinants of hospital follow up care were evaluated with multivariate analysis by generalized estimating equations (GEE). Results The median follow-up time was 9.0 (0.3-18.1) years. At fifth and…