Race and Clinical Outcome in Patients with Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix Treated with Radiation Therapy

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine factors underlying differences in outcome between African-American (AA) and Caucasian (C) patients undergoing radiation therapy (RT).

Methods: Patient, tumor, treatment characteristics, and the outcome of 316 AA and 94 C cervical cancer patients who underwent RT were compared. Median follow-up was 72.4 months.

Results: AA patients had a trend to a poorer 8-year cause-specific survival (47.9 vs 60.6%) (P = 0.10) compared to C patients with a significant difference seen in stage IIB-IVA disease (34.3 vs 59.5%) (P = 0.04). Several factors correlated with poor outcome were present in the AA group including lower mean hemoglobin levels during RT (P = 0.001), lower median income (P = 0.001), and less frequent intracavitary RT (P = 0.09). In addition, while uncommon in C patients, health problems were major reasons for treatment protraction and inability to undergo intracavitary RT in the AA patients. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that race was not an independent prognostic factor after controlling for difference in patient, tumor, and treatment factors.

Conclusions: AA cervical cancer patients possess multiple factors that adversely impact upon the efficacy of RT. These findings may add further insight into the observed differences in outcome of cervical cancer patients based on race.