Racial and ethnic disparities in the incidence of esophageal cancer in the United States, 1992-2013

Abstract

Racial and ethnic disparities in the incidence of esophageal cancer have not been thoroughly characterized with quantitative health-disparity measures. Using data from1992-2013 from 13 US cancer registries in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, we assessed such disparities according to histological type, based on a variety of disparity metrics. The age-standardized incidence rate of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was highest among black persons, while adenocarcinoma mainly affected white men. The rate of SCC decreased over time in all racial/ethnic groups, and this was most pronounced in black persons (by 5.7%per year among men and 5.0%among women). The adenocarcinoma rate rose among non-Hispanic whites and among black men. Racial/ethnic disparities in the incidence of total esophageal cancer decreased over time, which was duemainly to reduced disparities in SCC. The 2 absolute disparity measures - range difference and between-group variance - for adenocarcinoma rose by 3.2%and 6.8% per year, respectively, in men and by 1.8%and 5.3% per year, respectively, in women. This study demonstrates decreased racial/ethnic disparities in the incidence of esophageal SCC over time in the United States, while disparities increased in adenocarcinoma incidence asmeasured on the absolute scale.