patient and her father
Photo by Rhoda Baer
A new study indicates that race, insurance status, and socioeconomic status (SES) impact survival in adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL).
Researchers found evidence to suggest that patients diagnosed with HL between the ages of 15 and 39 are less likely to survive the disease if they are black, Hispanic, have no insurance or public health insurance, or live in a neighborhood with low SES.
Theresa H.M. Keegan, PhD, MS, of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center in Sacramento, California, and her colleagues conducted this research and reported the results in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Dr Keegan and her colleagues studied data from 9353 patients in the California Cancer Registry who were between 15 and 39 years old when they were diagnosed with HL between 1988 and 2011.
The team examined the impact of race/ethnicity, neighborhood SES, and health insurance on mortality.
The researchers found that AYAs diagnosed with early stage HL were twice as likely to die if they resided in a lower SES neighborhood.
Subjects were also twice as likely to die from HL if they had public health insurance or were uninsured, regardless of whether they were diagnosed at an early stage or a late stage.
Black AYA patients were 68% more likely to die of HL than non-Hispanic white patients, whether they were diagnosed at an early stage or a late stage.
And Hispanic AYA patients diagnosed at a late stage were 58% more likely than non-Hispanic white patients to die of HL, but there was no significant disparity for Hispanic patients diagnosed at an early stage.
“Identifying and reducing barriers to recommended treatment and surveillance in these AYAs at much higher risk of mortality is essential to ameliorating these survival disparities,” Dr Keegan said.
However, she and her colleagues noted that this study had limitations. The researchers were able to identify the first course of treatment but did not have specific details on the treatment that followed the initial period.
In addition, health insurance status at the time of diagnosis was not available for patients who were diagnosed before 2001, and the researchers did not have information on changes in patients’ insurance status that may have occurred after their initial treatment.
