Does fear of cancer recurrence predict cancer survivors' health care use?

At the suggestion of one of the reviewers, we performed additional preliminary analyses to compare the impact of FCR on health care utilization by gender and by diagnosis. We performed the regression analyses described above separately for (a) women and men and (b) breast vs. prostate cancer as there were not enough participants with lung and colorectal cancer to do separate analyses for those two other diagnoses. We could not perform analyses by age group as there were only four participants under the age of 50. When comparing the results of the regression analyses by gender, we found that among female survivors, FCR predicted outpatient clinic visits (ß = .22, F(1, 94) = 4.74, p = .032) and ER visits (ß = .28, F(3, 88) = 2.71, p = .050). Among male survivors, FCR predicted only number of medication (ß = .25, F(1, 70) = 4.57, p = .036). When comparing the results of the regression analyses by diagnosis, we found that among breast cancer survivors, FCR predicted outpatient clinic visits (ß = .31, F(1, 78) = 7.99, p = .006) and ER visits (ß = .31, F(3, 73) = 2.81, p = .046). Among prostate cancer survivors, FCR predicted only outpatient clinic visits (ß = .31, F(1, 81) = 8.32, p = .005).