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Racial disparities in cancer survival persisted over 20-year period
Race-based differences in cancer survival have not changed over time, and the disparities among black patients persist independent of treatment and disease stage, study results showed.
Ayal A. Aizer, MD, MHS, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues used the SEER database to identify 2.7 million patients diagnosed with lung, breast, prostate or colorectal cancers between 1988 and 2007. The final analysis included more than 1 million patients.
Ayal A. Aizer
Aizer and colleagues used a regression model to assess the role of race on cancer-specific mortality, and they used an interaction model to evaluate trends over time.
Analyses adjusted for year of diagnosis and demographics showed black patients had higher estimates of cancer-specific mortality than whites for all cancers combined (HR=1.28; 95% CI, 1.26-1.30) and for each individual cancer (P<.05 for all).
Survival disparities increased among patients with breast cancer during the study period. After adjustments for receipt of definitive therapy and stage of disease at presentation, researchers determined the HR for breast cancer mortality for black patients compared with white patients was 1.37 in the 1988-1997 time period and 1.53 in the 1998-2007 time period (P<.001).
Researchers observed no significant change in mortality differences for the other cancer types evaluated.
Results also showed black patients more frequently presented with advanced stages of cancer than white patients (P<.001), and that black patients were less likely to undergo definitive therapy than white patients (P<.001).
“Additional strategies beyond screening and improving access to care, such as further research into tumor biologies disproportionately affecting African Americans, are needed to improve survival for African American patients with cancer,” Aizer and colleagues concluded.
Disclosure: HemOnc Today could not confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.