Racial and ethnic differences in abdominal soft tissue sarcoma incidence in New Zealand: a retrospective audit

Abstract

Background: Soft tissue sarcomas are a rare and heterogenous group of tumours. Anecdotally there seems to be an over representation of patients of M aori ethnicity presented at the Auckland Regional Sarcoma Multidisciplinary Meeting (MDM). To date no study has reported on ethnicity demographics of abdominal and retroperitoneal sarcoma in New Zealand. The aim of this study is to characterize the ethnicity distribution of patients discussed at the regional MDM. Methods: A retrospective audit was performed of patients presented at the Auckland Regional Sarcoma MDM between January 2015 and December 2020 with abdominal sarcoma. Ethnicity documentation for these patients was reviewed. Results: One hundred and twenty-four patients with intra-abdominal and retroperitoneal tumours were discussed at MDM with 61 proceeding for resection, of those 43 (70.5%) were primary tumours, 10 (16.4%) were recurrent tumours and 8 (13.1%) had metastatic disease. Liposarcoma made up 56 (45.2%) cases, Leiomyosarcoma 33 (26.6%), Other 35 (28.2%). Ethnicities for this group specifically were European 64 (51.6%), M aori 31 (25.0%), Pacific Peoples 17 (13.7%), Asian 6 (4.8%) and Other/unknown 3(2.4%). This was found to be statistically significantly different to the expected ethnicity distribution based on 2018 census data from North Island DHBs (χ 2 = 19.55, p = 0.00), with M aori and Pacific Peoples being over-represented and Asian patients being under-represented. Recommendation for surgery did not appear to be related to ethnicity. Conclusion: Our descriptive data shows a higher proportion of patients of M aori ethnicity discussed through the North Island regional sarcoma MDM than we would expect comparted to ethnicity distribution in the general population. It is unclear whether this represents a true difference in incidence based on ethnicity.(CMDHB). This is a weekly MDM accepting referrals from all DHBs in the North Island of New Zealand (NZ). No study has previously investigated ethnicity distribution of sarcoma in NZ adults. The aim of this study is to characterize the ethnicity distribution of soft tissue abdominal sarcomas discussed through the CMDHB sarcoma MDM.

Retroperitoneal Sarcoma Care in 2021

“…Additional environmental toxins and host-related immunosuppressive etiologies have been outlined in a review [ 32 ]. Population studies have discovered a higher preponderance of sarcoma within African American population [ 35 ], and the Māori population of New Zealand [ 36 ]. Further studies are required in order to determine the association with determinants of health, such as socioeconomic status.…”