Introduction: The purpose of this study is to determine the likelihood of racial disparities between African American and Caucasian patients treated with hypopharyngeal carcinoma at a tertiary care institution over the last 25 years. Methods: HIPPA-compliant, IRB-approved retrospective analysis of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the hypopharynx treated at our institution between January 1994 and December 2018 was performed. The data regarding the demographics, stage, treatment and follow up were collected. Outcomes including median survival and overall survival were evaluated using the Kaplan Meier method. All analyses were performed using SPSS version 24. Results: We evaluated 144 hypopharyngeal carcinoma patients who were treated during the time period. Our patient cohort consisted of 61.8% African Americans and 35.4% Caucasians (P= 0.538). Overall, 96% of patients presented with advanced stage disease (stages III & IV), and only 4% of patients presented with early stage disease (Stages I & II). There was no significant difference between African American and Caucasians who presented with advanced disease (96.6 % vs 94.1%). Among our patient cohort, 15.3% of patients didn’t receive any treatments, 51.4%, 22.9% and 10.4% of patients underwent definitive chemoradiotherapy, definitive surgery, and palliative chemotherapy respectively. There were no significant differences in each treatment group between the two races. The median follow up of the entire cohort was 13 months. There was no significant difference in the median survival of African American and Caucasian patients (16 months vs 15 months, p=0.917). In addition, there was no significant difference in the overall survival between African American and Caucasian patients at 3 years (27.2% vs 36.3%, p=0.917) or at 5 years (20.4% vs 16.7 %, p= 0.917). Conclusions: Retrospective review of the patients with hypopharyngeal cancer treated at our institution over the last 25 years did not reveal a significant racial disparity in regards to stage at presentation or prognosis. This study demonstrates that if patients have equal access to the care, they are likely to have similar prognosis despite racial differences. Further studies are warranted to validate this hypothesis. At the meantime, efforts should be focused on improving the access to medical care for the underserved population.

Citation Format: Toms Vengaloor Thomas, Mary R Nittala, Teessa Perekattu Kuruvilla, Anu Abraham, Eldrin Bhanat, Satyaseelan Packianathan, Madhava Kanakamedala, Srinivasan Vijayakumar. Is there a racial disparity in the prognosis of hypopharyngeal carcinoma? 25-year experience from a tertiary care medical center in the United States [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr D127.

©2020 American Association for Cancer Research.
2020
American Association for Cancer Research.