Concordance of Cancer Screening Attendance Among Spouse Couples: A Cross‐Sectional Survey of the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project

TL;DR

This study found that when one spouse attends cancer screening, the other is more likely to attend as well, suggesting spousal influence can be used to improve cancer prevention efforts.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that spousal influence on cancer screening attendance is consistent across cancer types and age groups.

Findings

Spousal attendance in colorectal cancer screening is significantly associated (OR 2.7 for wives, 2.6 for husbands).

The association is consistent across colorectal, gastric, and lung cancer screenings.

Spousal influence on screening attendance is independent of age and cancer type.

Abstract

Owing to spousal pairs often exhibiting similar health behaviors, this study examined the concordance of cancer screening attendance between spouses using cross‐sectional data from a large biobank study in Japan, which included 2022 spousal pairs.

Cross‐sectional study.

Self‐administered data were collected to determine whether participants had undergone screening for colorectal, gastric, and lung cancers in the past year. The following two analyses were conducted: the exposure was whether the husband attended cancer screening, and the outcome was whether the wife attended; the exposure was whether the wife attended, and the outcome was whether the husband attended. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed, adjusting for confounding factors in the exposed individuals.

The multivariate odds ratio (95% confidence interval, p‐value) for wives attending colorectal cancer screening when their husbands had attended was 2.7 (2.2–3.3, p < 0.0001), indicating a significant positive association. Similarly, when wives were the exposure and husbands were the outcomes, the odds ratio was 2.6 (2.2–3.2, p < 0.0001). Notably, these associations were consistent across colorectal, gastric, and lung cancer screenings.

The findings of this study support the hypothesis that the attendance of one spouse at cancer screening significantly positively influences that of the other spouse, regardless of the type of cancer screening or the age of the spouses. Novel intervention strategies can be developed that specifically target spousal pairs and potentially enhance the effectiveness of cancer prevention initiatives compared to those targeting individuals alone.

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