Pancreatic cancer: Do disparities in mortality rates exist with respect to socioeconomic status?

Abstract

e19007 Background: Pancreatic cancer continues to have one of the highest mortality rates among major cancer diagnoses with rates greater than 90 percent for all stages and with five year survival rates below 10 percent. With access to treatment modalities such as chemo-radiation, staged surgical interventions and targeted therapies, survival times have increased but due to the costs of these procedures, they may not be accessible to all members of society. Recent studies have shown that lower socioeconomic status is associated with higher mortality rates and lower survival times. With this study we aim to investigate if disparities exist among socioeconomic classes, based on zip code location, in a major multi-ethnic metropolitan city using census data. Methods: Malignant neoplasm mortality data at the ZIP code level was gathered from the New York City Department of Health Vital Statistics Mortality Data from years 2009-2011. NYC population data was gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau 2010 decennial census. We used ordinary least squares regression to assess the independent association between neighborhood median income and neighborhood mortality from malignant neoplasms arising from the pancreas. Results: In 2009-2011, 2,527 deaths from malignant neoplasms arising from the pancreas were recorded across NYC. There is no statistically significant correlation between neighborhood median income and age-adjusted mortality from malignant neoplasms arising from the pancreas for males and for females. For males, there was an R-squared of 0.001721 ( P-value > 0.05). For females, there was an adjusted adjusted R-squared of 9.818e-05 ( P-value > 0.05). Conclusions: Neighborhood median income is not associated with an increase in mortality rate with respect to neoplasms arising from the pancreas.