Racial Disparities in Oropharyngeal Cancer Stage at Diagnosis

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

AIM: To evaluate the impact of race on disease stage at diagnosis in patients with oropharyngeal cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The cohort included 18,791 adult patients diagnosed with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma between 2004 and 2012, from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 18 Database. RESULTS: After adjusting for age, sex, marital status, tumor site, and year of diagnosis, black race was associated with increased risk of presenting with Stage III or IV disease (OR 1.24, p=0.016), T3 or T4 tumors (OR 2.16, <0.001), distant metastasis (OR 2, p<0.001), and unresectable tumors (OR 1.65, p<0.001). Race was not associated with risk of presenting with nodal metastasis diagnosis (OR 0.93, p=0.241). CONCLUSION: Black race is associated with increased risk of advanced disease presentation in oropharyngeal cancer.