Racial and socioeconomic disparities in the treatment of resectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Abstract

e19026 Background: Cancer surgeries performed at high case volume centers (hCVCs) are associated with improved surgical and clinical outcomes. Resectable hepatocellular carcinoma (rHCC) is not common in the US and the impact of surgery at hCVCs has not been well assessed. We analyzed the impact of surgery at hCVCs on survival, and the potential racial and socioeconomic disparities associated with obtaining care at hCVCs. Methods: We collected demographic, diagnostic, treatment, and survival data of 96,215 patients with stage I-III HCC diagnosed between 2004 – 2015 from the National Cancer Database. To estimate the average surgical volume/year, number of reported cases were divided by the number of years the facility was represented in the database. Logistic regression was used to determine the associations between case volume, facility type and the demographic and clinical variables. We assessed demographic and clinical predictors of overall survival (OS) using Cox proportional hazards regression. Results: In total, 10,419 resected HCC patients were included in the analysis. The median age was 64 (18 – 90), 68.4% were male and 69.5% were white. Facilities were divided into quartiles by average number of surgical CV/year: 1st quartile (1Q) 0.08-1.60, 2Q 1.61 – 3.91, 3Q 3.92 – 8.34, and 4Q 8.35 – 45.34. In a multivariate model, improved OS was seen with each increase in quartiles with the highest CVCs (i.e 4Q) HR 0.70 (95% CI 0.63 – 0.77). Treatment at academic centers did not show an OS advantage (HR 0.93; 95% CI 0.86 – 1.01). Factors including black race (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.75-0.93), age 65+ (OR 0.91; 95% CI 0.82 – 1.00), and living in a metro area with a population of 250,000 – 1 million people (OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.62 – 0.74) were less likely to be associated with treatment at hCVCs. Conversely, Asians/Pacific Islanders (OR 2.28; 95% CI 2.04 – 2.55) and those with private insurance (OR 1.33; 95% CI 1.18– 1.40) or Medicare (OR 1.21; 95% CI 1.05 – 1.38) were more likely to be treated at hCVCs. Conclusions: rHCC is not common in the US and having surgery at hCVCs improves OS. However, racial and socioeconomic disparities exist in receiving care at these hCVCs.