Association Between Geographic Access to Cancer Care and Receipt of Radiation Therapy for Rectal Cancer

Trimodality therapy (chemoradiation and surgery) is the standard of care for stage II/III rectal cancer but nearly one third of patients do not receive radiation therapy (RT). We examined the relationship between the density of radiation oncologists and the travel distance to receipt of RT.A retrospective study based on the National Cancer Data Base identified 26,845 patients aged 18 to 80 years with stage II/III rectal cancer diagnosed from...