More American women under age 65 have been diagnosed sooner and treated earlier for ovarian cancer since the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2010, new research shows.
And, more women received treatment within 30 days of diagnosis, improving their survival odds, the researchers said.
For the study, the investigators analyzed data from the U.S. National Cancer Database. They compared nearly 36,000 women who were diagnosed and treated between 2004 and 2009, with more than 37,000 women diagnosed and treated between 2011 and 2014. Women in both groups were between 21 and 64 years of age.
A similar number of seniors with ovarian cancer was used as a control group, because those women had access to Medicare and were much less