Reports on the expenditure of cancer treatments per patient using comprehensive data remain unavailable in Japan. This study aimed to use Japan’s cancer registry data and health service utilization data for evaluating the disease-specific, per-patient costs of five major cancers—stomach, lung, colorectal, liver, and breast cancers. We used a database linking the 2017 data from a hospital-based cancer registry and the health service utilization data from the Diagnosis Procedure Combination survey. All patients who started their first treatment course at each hospital were included. The costs were calculated using the total volume of the health services provided and the unit fee information included in the data. We analyzed 304,698 patients. Lung cancer had the highest healthcare cost per-patient for the first year of diagnosis and the longest median hospitalization duration. Conversely, breast cancer showed the lowest cost and the shortest median hospitalization duration. However, in the first month after diagnosis, colorectal cancer showed the highest cost. Subsequently, the gaps between the costs of the five common cancers drastically diminished. The cancer type having the longest hospitalization duration had the highest overall healthcare resource utilization costs. This information is essential for care planning and research studies.

Objectives: Existing studies of fathers’ involvement in childcare have focused on its impact on children’s psychosocial development and the facilitation of family functions, like marital relationships. In this study, we investigated the factors that determine paternal childcare in Japan, particularly focusing on work-related hours and environment, separately, according to mothers’ employment status. Methods: We used data from the Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century (2010 cohort) conducted in Japan. We restricted the sample to 27 783 participants with working fathers and analyzed how paternal work-related factors affect fathers’ childcare involvement by mothers’ employment status using an ordered logistic regression model. Results: In the model adjusting for all covariates, the odds ratio (OR) of spending less time with children on weekdays was higher: for fathers who worked 50 and more hours per week compared with those who worked 40-49 hours per week (OR = 1.95, 95% CI: 1.72-2.20 for 50-59 hours), for fathers whose commuting hours were longer than those commuting less than 0.5 hours per day (OR = 2.93, 95% CI: 2.34-3.69 for 1.5 or more hours), for larger workplace employee sizes than for 5-99 employee sizes (OR = 1.56, 95% CI: 1.38-1.77 for 500 or more employees). The associations between these paternal work-related variables and paternal hours spent with the children on weekdays were almost the same if the mothers were working or not working. Conclusions: Regardless of whether the mother is working, fathers’ work environment factors, such as working hours, play a key role in their involvement in childcare.

Background: No previous study reported an association between paternal involvement in childcare and housework and maternal physical punishment.Methods: Using data from the Japanese Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st century (N = 38,554), we analyzed responses about fathers’ involvement in childcare and housework at 6 months and mothers’ spanking of children at 3.5 years. Fathers’ involvement in childcare and housework was scored and categorized into quartiles. Spanking frequency was asked in the “often”, “sometimes”, or “not at all” categories. Multivariable-adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the mothers’ often spanking children were computed for the fathers’ involvement in childcare and housework. We also stratified the association by fathers’ working hours (40–49, 50–59, or ≥ 60 hours/week).Results: Among the 16,373 respondents, the proportion of mothers who often spanked their children was 4.8%. Compared with the lowest quartile, a higher frequency of paternal involvement in housework was associated with a lower risk of spanking children (p trend = 0.001). Adjustment for covariates attenuated the association, but significant association was observed in the 3rd quartile of paternal involvement in housework [OR (95% CI): 0.77 (0.62-0.96)]. When the fathers worked fewer than 50 hours a week, a significant negative association was observed between the fathers’ frequency of childcare and the likeliness of the mothers’ spanking their children (p trend = 0.02).Conclusions: The fathers’ active involvement in childcare and housework could reduce the mothers’ physical punishment for their children.

Kakuwa T, et al. J Gynecol Oncol. 2025 Mar;36:e77. https://doi.org/10.3802/jgo.2025.36.e77

Self-administered questionnaire surveys are instrumental in revealing patient experiences. However, concerns about the quality of data and validity of results arise from nonresponses, either to the entire survey or to specific items therein. The format of the survey can affect the ease of answering and subsequent responses. Older patients who are more likely to have some cognitive decline may be especially sensitive to questionnaire comprehensibility and response methods. We surveyed the experiences of patients aged 65 years and older with cancer in four hospitals. Randomly selected patients from the hospital-based cancer registries received questionnaires with either the grid or text-choice response formats. We compared item nonresponse rates for each question between the two types of questionnaires. Out of invited 1500 patients, 51.3% responded. We included data from 675 patients (331 and 326 in the grid and text-choice formats, respectively) in the final analysis. The non-response rate of items considering participant demographics, including age, gender, and cancer sites, did not differ between groups (mean age: 76.3 and 75.8 years in the grid and text-choice formats, respectively). Most items with the grid format had higher proportions of item nonresponse than those with the text-choice format. The difference was more pronounced in patients aged 75 years and above, compared to those aged 65–74 years. In older patients, text-choice format survey questions elicited fewer item nonresponses compared to grid format questions. The text-choice format should preferably be used consistently throughout surveys targeting older persons.

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) improve the prognosis of patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). We conducted a retrospective cohort study using cancer registries linked with health utilization data in Japan and Taiwan to assess TKI usage in older and non-older patients. Patients diagnosed with GIST (2012–2014) were categorized into the following: adjuvant and advanced/metastatic settings. The duration and patterns of imatinib therapy were compared between the older (aged ≥ 75 years) and non-older (< 75 years) groups. We included 232 Japanese and 492 Taiwanese patients in the adjuvant setting, and 235 Japanese and 401 Taiwanese patients in the advanced/metastatic setting. Older patients had higher proportions of starting with lower doses (< 400 mg/day) than the non-older patients (adjuvant: 22.5% vs. 4.3% [Japan]; 22.5% vs. 10.9% [Taiwan]; advanced/metastatic: 29.6% vs. 7.2% [Japan]; 32.6% vs. 8.1% [Taiwan]; all p < 0.01). The median time to stop imatinib was shorter in the older than in the non-older patients (adjuvant: 301 vs. 975 days [Japan], 366 vs. 1028 days [Taiwan]; advanced/metastatic: 423 vs. 542 days [Japan]; 366.5 vs. 837 days [Taiwan]). More older patients with GIST tended to have TKIs at a lower initial dose and a shorter imatinib duration than the non-older patients.