Racial Disparities Discovered in Some Soft Tissue Cancer Survival

Patients with soft tissue sarcomas in the extremities have high variance of treatment and survival according to race and ethnicity, reports a new study in the March 1, 2008, issue of Cancer.

The accepted standard treatment for extremity soft tissue sarcomas is limb preservation with surgery. Because radiation therapy is used before or after surgery, amputation is seldom necessary. Study researchers reviewed the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database to compare treatments in about 6,000 patients with extremity soft tissue sarcoma. They found that blacks had significantly lower rates of surgeries that would have saved their arm or leg and were less like to receive additional treatments that would lead to improved survival. Compared to whites, blacks had a 39 percent higher death rate related to their disease.

Other findings were discovered related to race and ethnicity. Most notably, blacks, Hispanics and Asians tended to have larger tumors than whites and Asians had the lowest rates of amputations. The study did not address the reasons for differing outcomes in patients.

Extremity soft tissue sarcomas affect about 9,220 people in the United States and more than one-half involve an upper or lower extremity. Lead author for the study was Steve R. Martinez, M.D., a surgical oncologist with UC Davis Cancer Center in Sacramento, Calif.