4.

Overall and disease-specific survival is poor for oral and oropharyngeal cancer patients, and Black men fare worst. This illustrates the need for long-term cancer survival plans incorporating disparity effects in overall cancer outcomes.

Disparities, such as race and health insurance status, are important predictors of stage at presentation of patients with head and neck cancer. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 38: E1826-E1832, 2016.

No abstract

Objective To determine whether marital status independently predicts survival in a head and neck cancer (HNC) survivor population. Methods In this retrospective cohort study, we analysed data from 460 adult patients (59.31 ± 11.42) years diagnosed with HNC at an academic tertiary referral centre between 1997 and 2012. Cox proportional hazards model estimated the effect of marital status on survival. Results Our study had 73% men, and 82.2% were Whites. We found an association between marital status and HNC survival. Unmarried HNC patients had a 66% increase in hazard of death compared to married patients (aHR = 1.66, 95% CI = 1.23–2.23). This was after controlling for sociodemographic variables (age, race, sex and health insurance status), social habits (tobacco and alcohol), primary anatomical subsite (oral cavity, oropharyngeal, laryngeal and others), stage at presentation (early vs. late stage) and treatment modality (surgery, surgery with adjuvant therapies, other single modality therapy and palliative care). Conclusions Being married confers survival advantage for HNC survivors. Our finding underscores the need to recognise this aspect of survivorship. Social support should be considered part of standard care for managing HNC. There may also be need to develop other support mechanisms, especially for unmarried HNC survivors.