Persistent inequalities in 90-day colon cancer mortality: an English cohort study

• Published in: British journal of cancer Vol. 117; no. 9; pp. 1396 - 1404
• Main Authors: Fowler, H, Belot, A, Njagi, E N, Luque-Fernandez, M A, Maringe, C, Quaresma, M, Kajiwara, M, Rachet, B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 24.10.2017; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/4028/67/1504/1885/1393; 692/4028/67/2324; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Cancer Research; Cohort analysis; Cohort Studies; Colon cancer; Colonic Neoplasms - epidemiology; Colonic Neoplasms - mortality; Colonic Neoplasms - pathology; Colorectal cancer; Death; Drug Resistance; England - epidemiology; Epidemiology; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Molecular Medicine; Mortality; Neoplasm Staging; Oncology; Prognosis; Risk Factors; Social Class; Socioeconomic Factors; Statistical analysis; Survival Rate; Young Adult; stage at diagnosis; short-term mortality; inequalities; comorbidity; colon cancer; socio-economic status
• ISSN: 0007-0920; 1532-1827
• DOI: 10.1038/bjc.2017.295

Background: Variation in colon cancer mortality occurring shortly after diagnosis is widely reported between socio-economic status (SES) groups: we investigated the role of different prognostic factors in explaining variation in 90-day mortality. Methods: National cancer registry data were linked with national clinical audit data and Hospital Episode Statistics records for 69 769 adults diagnosed with colon cancer in England between January 2010 and March 2013. By gender, logistic regression was used to estimate the effects of SES, age and stage at diagnosis, comorbidity and surgical treatment on probability of death within 90 days from diagnosis. Multiple imputations accounted for missing stage. We predicted conditional probabilities by prognostic factor patterns and estimated the effect of SES (deprivation) from the difference between deprivation-specific average predicted probabilities. Results: Ninety-day probability of death rose with increasing deprivation, even after accounting for the main prognostic factors. When setting the deprivation level to the least deprived group for all patients and keeping all other prognostic factors as observed, the differences between deprivation-specific averaged predicted probabilities of death were greatly reduced but persisted. Additional analysis suggested stage and treatment as potential contributors towards some of these inequalities. Conclusions: Further examination of delayed diagnosis, access to treatment and post-operative care by deprivation group may provide additional insights into understanding deprivation disparities in mortality.