Does Survival Vary for Breast Cancer Patients in the United States? A Study from Six Randomly Selected States

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Disparities in some characteristics of breast cancer patients and their survival data for six randomly selected states in the US were examined. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A probability random sampling method was used to select the records of 2,000 patients from each of six randomly selected states. Demographic and disease characteristics were extracted from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. To evaluate relationships between variables, we employed a Cox Proportional Regression to compare survival times in the different states. RESULTS: Iowa had the highest mean age of diagnosis at 64.14 years (SE = 0.324) and Georgia had the lowest at 57.97 years (SE = 0.313). New Mexico had the longest mean survival time of 189.09 months (SE = 20.414) and Hawaii the shortest at 119.01 (SE = 5.394) months, a 70.08-month difference (5.84 years). Analysis of stage of diagnosis showed that the highest survival times for Whites and American Indians/Alaska Natives were for stage I cancers. The highest survival times for Blacks varied. Stage IV cancer consistently showed the lowest survival times. CONCLUSIONS: Differences in breast cancer characteristics across states highlight the need to understand differences between the states that result in variances in breast cancer survival.