Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, ICD-9-CM diagnostic and
procedure codes, and revenue center codes from physician claims files,
the hospital outpatient claims files, or the Medicare provider review
files. If a patient had at least one claim for chemotherapy within
6 months of surgery, she was coded as having received chemotherapy.
A second analysis was performed to determine the influence of the duration
of chemotherapy on outcomes for high-risk patients [12,20]. To
exclude patients with recurrent and progressive disease, only highrisk
patients who received b8 months of continuous chemotherapy
were included. Patients were stratified based on the duration of chemotherapy
as ≤3 months and 4–8 months.
To assess adequacy of surgical staging, we evaluated lymphadenectomy.
A patient with any pathologic nodal assessment as defined by
SEER was considered to have undergone lymphadenectomy.