Racial disparities in conditional survival of patients with bladder cancer: a population-based study

BACKGROUND: Traditional estimates can only provide static predictions of cancer outcomes and cannot assess the evolving effect of race on patient survival. This study aims to reveal the dynamic survival of patients with bladder cancer and to explore the evolving effect of race on patient prognosis. METHODS: Using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry, 99,590 white, 6,036 African American, and 4,685 Asian/Pacific Islander (API) patients with bladder cancer were identified. Conditional cancer-specific survival (CSS) rates, which could reflect the dynamic survival prediction of cancer patients, represented the primary outcomes, and were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier algorithm. The evolving effect of race on patient survival was evaluated by multivariable Cox regression in combination with conditional survival (CS) estimates. RESULTS: The 5-year CSS for African American patients who had survived 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 years after definitive therapy improved from the baseline calculation by + 5.8 (84.4%), + 9.5 (87.4%), + 12.8 (90.0%), + 14.4 (91.3%), and + 14.7% (91.5%), respectively. The increasing trend also held for overall white and API patients, and for all patient subsets when CS was calculated according to different levels of sex, age, and disease stage. African Americans, despite having the worst survival at baseline, could have CSS comparable to their white and API counterparts after 4 years of survivorship. In addition, the risk of death for African Americans tended to decrease with increasing survival, and the risk was no longer significantly different from that of whites after 4 years of survival. CONCLUSIONS: While having the worst initial predicted outcomes, African Americans may eventually achieve comparable survival to white and API patients given several years of survivorship. As patient survival increases, African American race may lose its role as an indicator of poorer prognosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12894-023-01293-8.