The influence of marital status on survival of gallbladder cancer patients: a population-based study

Marital status has been found to be a prognostic factor for survival in various cancers, but its role in gallbladder cancer (GBC) has not been fully studied. In this study, we used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER)-registered database to analyze the survival of GBC patients with different marital status. A total of 6,627 GBC patients were selected from SEER database from 2004 to 2013. The age, race, grade, histologic type, AJCC stage, SEER stage and marital status were identified as independent prognostic factors. Married GBC patients had a higher 5-year cancer-specific survival (CSS) than that of unmarried ones (20.1% v.s. 17.8%, P < 0.05). Subgroup analyses showed that widowed patients had 14.0% less of 5-year CSS compared to married ones of stage I (55.9% v.s. 41.9%, P < 0.05), 14.7% of stage II (15.6% v.s. 10.9%, P < 0.05), and 1.5% of stage III + IV (2.9% v.s. 1.4%, P < 0.05). In addition, single is an independent prognostic factor at stage III + IV (HR = 1.225, 95%CI 1.054–1.423, P = 0.008). These results indicated that widowed patients were at a high risk of cancer-specific mortality and marriage can be a protective prognostic factor in CSS.