Analysis of race and gender disparities in mortality trends from patients diagnosed with nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer from 2000 to 2014.

Abstract

e17533 Background: Squamous cell carcinoma of the nasopharynx, oropharynx and hypopharynx constitutes a majority of head neck malignancies. The incidence-based mortality across different races has been noted to be divergent. This study analyzes the trend in incidence-based mortality from the years 2000 to 2014 amongst both the genders in Caucasian/White and African American/Black patients. Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Database was queried to conduct a nation-wide analysis for the years 2000 to 2014. Incidence-based mortality for all stages of nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer was queried and the results were grouped by race (Caucasian/White, African American/Black, American Indian/Alaskan native and Asian/Pacific Islander) and gender. All stages and ages were included in the analysis. T-test was used to determine statistically significance difference between various subgroups. Linearized trend lines were used to visualize the mortality trends of all sub groups. Results: Incidence-based mortality rates (per 1000) for nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer all races and both the genders is shown in the table below. The male to female gender disparity in mortality is~ 1:3 in patients with nasopharynx across all races and becomes worse to ~1:4 and ~1:5 for patients with oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancers respectively. Notably the highest incidence based mortality for nasopharyngeal cancers is seen in Asian/pacific Islander males and a similar peak is noted for hypopharyngeal cancers in African American/Black males. Conclusions: A significant gender disparity exists in all there pharyngeal cancers across all races. It is unclear if female gender is protective but further study is warranted in a stage- specific and age-specific manner to better understand this disparity.[Table: see text]