Background: Disparities in ovarian cancer survival for African American women are multifactorial. We evaluated racial and ethnic differences in time to ovarian cancer surgery in members of an integrated health care system.
Patients and methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we identified women diagnosed with invasive epithelial-type ovarian cancer between January 1, 2008, through December 31, 2014, at an integrated health care system in the United States. We extracted data on cancer-related variables and sociodemographic variables from the health care system's cancer registry and electronic health records. We included patients who received ovarian cancer surgery without neoadjuvant chemotherapy. We defined time to surgery as the number of days between diagnostic imaging study and surgery. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to evaluate crude and adjusted association of race and ethnicity with time to surgery.
Results: Of 872 patients included, 55.1% were non-Hispanic White (hereafter, White), 24.9% were Hispanic, 14.6% were Asian/Pacific Islander (PI)/Native American, and 5.5% were African American. Median age at diagnosis was 59.0 years. African American patients were diagnosed at an older age and were more likely to come from deprived neighborhoods than other racial and ethnic groups. Median time to surgery was longer for African American patients compared with White, Hispanic, and Asian/PI/Native American patients (median days: 27.5 vs 21.0, 24.5, and 26.0, respectively; P<.0001). In adjusted models, the likelihood of having received surgery at any given time post diagnostic imaging was 31% lower for African American patients compared with White patients (HR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51-0.93). This likelihood was also lower for Hispanic and Asian/PI/Native American patients, but not statistically significant.
Conclusions: Our findings showed that patients with ovarian cancer from racial and ethnic minorities had a lower likelihood of having received surgery at any given time post diagnostic imaging compared with White patients, demonstrating that racial and ethnic differences exist in time to ovarian cancer surgery in patients with relatively equal access to care.