Socioeconomic Status Is Associated With Survival for Patients With Pancreatic Cancer

An analysis of patients with pancreatic cancer showed that lower neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with more advanced disease at diagnosis, lower probability of receiving surgery, and worse disease-related survival.

This study was published in the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research.

The researchers evaluated data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results specialized SES registry for individuals diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between 2000 and 2015. A total of 83,902 participants were included in the analysis. Variables of study included neighborhood employment rate, percent of population above the poverty line, educational level, median rent, median household value, and median household income. Patients were classified according to their census-tract SES. The researchers assessed the effect of SES on access to surgical resection, pancreatic-cancer specific survival, and overall survival (OS).

Patients with lower SES were less likely to receive surgical resection for pancreatic cancer (odds ratio 0.719; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.673-0.767; P<0.001). Among patients with localized disease who underwent surgery, higher SES was associated with a median OS of 20 months, compared to 17 months for patients with lower SES. (P<0.001). Patients with lower SES also had worse pancreatic cancer-specific survival (hazard ratio 1.212; 95% CI 1.135-1.295; P<0.001).

“Poor neighborhood SES is associated with more advanced disease at presentation, less probability of surgical resection and even poorer outcomes after surgical resection,” the researchers concluded.