The influence of marital status on the survival of patients with esophageal cancer: a population-based, propensity-matched study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Multiple studies have shown that marital status is associated with the survival of various types of cancer patients. However, there has not been adequate evidence of the association between marital status and the survival of patients with esophageal cancer (EC). We aimed to investigate the effect of marital status on survival of EC patients. METHODS We identified 15,598 EC patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Meanwhile, propensity scores for marital status, which were calculated for each patient using a nonparsimonious multivariable logistic regression model, were used to match 6,319 unmarried patients with 9,279 married patients. We performed Kaplan-Meier analysis and multivariate Cox regression to analyze the association between marital status and the overall survival (OS) and EC cause-specific survival (CSS) of EC patients before matching and after matching. RESULTS We matched 2,986 unmarried patients with 2,986 married patients. Unmarried patients had poorer OS than married patients before matching (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.18-1.27; P < 0.0001) and after matching (HR: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.13-1.27; P < 0.0001) and poorer CSS than married patients before matching (HR: 1.21; 95% CI: 1.16-1.26; P < 0.0001) and after matching (HR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.10-1.24; P < 0.0001). Further analysis showed that among different unmarried patients, widowed patients had the poorest OS (HR: 1.46; 95% CI: 1.38-1.55; P < 0.0001) and CSS (HR: 1.43; 95% CI: 1.34-1.52; P < 0.0001) compared with married patients. CONCLUSIONS Unmarried EC patients had poorer survival rates than married EC patients. Meanwhile, widowed patients with EC had the highest risk of death compared with single, married, and divorced patients.