Abstract
BackgroundSex differences have been reported in the prognosis of certain cancers. In this study, we investigated whether Korean females display better survival rates compared with male patients for solid tumor sites.MethodsWe analyzed data from the Korean National Cancer Incidence Database from 599,288 adult patients diagnosed with solid cancers between 2005 and 2009. Patients were followed until December 2010. We applied a relative excess risk (RER) model adjusting for year of follow-up, age at diagnosis, and stage at diagnosis.ResultsFor all solid cancer sites combined, women displayed an 11% lower risk of death compared to men (RER 0.89; 95% CI 0.88–0.90) after adjusting for year of follow-up, age, stage, and case mix. Women showed significantly lower RERs for the following sites: head/neck, esophagus, small intestine, liver, nasal cavities, lung, bone/cartilages, melanoma of skin, soft tissue, brain and CNS, and thyroid. In contrast, women displayed a poorer prognosis than did men for colorectal, laryngeal, kidney and bladder cancer. However, the survival gaps between men and women narrowed by increase in age; female patients over 75 years of age displayed a 3% higher RER of death compared with males in this age group.ConclusionsFemale cancer patients display an improved survival for the majority of solid tumor sites, even after adjustment for age and stage. Age at diagnosis was the major contributor to the women’s survival advantage.
Highlights
Sex is known to be an important factor in pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of cancers, and it has been an independent prognostic factor for several cancer sites.There have been some studies that showed better cancer survival rates in women for lung [1,2,3,4], CNS lymphoma [5], melanoma [6,7,8], and renal cell carcinoma [9]
It has been reported that male patients with colorectal [4] and bladder cancer display a better prognosis over females [4,10,11]
We analyzed a total of 599,288 solid cancer sites; 41.9% of these were in women
Summary
Sex is known to be an important factor in pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of cancers, and it has been an independent prognostic factor for several cancer sites.There have been some studies that showed better cancer survival rates in women for lung [1,2,3,4], CNS lymphoma [5], melanoma [6,7,8], and renal cell carcinoma [9]. It has been reported that male patients with colorectal [4] and bladder cancer display a better prognosis over females [4,10,11]. Women have a longer life expectancy in most countries [12,13], and are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at older age than men. If their asymptomatic cancers through cancer screening tended to be diagnosed more frequently in women, they could show better survival rates than men. We investigated whether Korean females display better survival rates compared with male patients for solid tumor sites
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