Ayala García, AmayaSerra, LauraHernando Rodríguez, Julio César, 1988-Benavides, Fernando G. (Fernando García)2022-01-312022-01-312021Ayala-Garcia A, Serra L, Hernando-Rodriguez JC, Benavides FG. Returning to work after a sickness absence due to cancer: a cohort study of salaried workers in Catalonia (Spain). Sci Rep. 2021;11(1):23953. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03368-82045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10230/52369Cancer incidence and survival rates have increased in the last decades and as a result, the number of working age people diagnosed with cancer who return to work. In this study the probability of accumulating days of employment and employment participation trajectories (EPTs) in a sample of salaried workers in Catalonia (Spain) who had a sickness absence (SA) due to cancer were compared to salaried workers with SA due to other diagnoses or without SA. Each individual with SA due to cancer between 2012 and 2015 was matched by age, sex, and onset of time at risk to a worker with SA due to other diagnoses and another worker without SA. Accumulated days of employment were measured, and negative binomial models were applied to assess differences between comparison groups. Latent class models were applied to identify EPTs and multinomial regression models to analyse the probability of belonging to one EPT of each group. Men and women without SA or with SA due to other diagnoses had at least a 9% higher probability of continuing in employment compared to workers who had a SA due to cancer, especially among men without SA (adjusted IRR 1.27, 95% CI 1.06‒1.53). Men without SA had the highest probability of having high stable EPT compared to workers who had a SA due to cancer (adjusted RRR 3.21, 95% CI 1.87‒5.50). Even though workers with SA due to cancer continue working afterwards, they do it less often than matched controls and with a less stable employment trajectory. Health and social protection systems should guaranty cancer survivors the opportunity to continue voluntary participation in the labour market.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-03368-8Cancer epidemiologyOccupational healthPublic healthinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess