Impact of socioeconomic disparities on cause-specific survival of retinoblastoma.

Retinoblastoma (RB) is a rare disease of infancy and early childhood. This study investigated the effects of socioeconomic factors on the cause-specific survival of RB. Data from patients diagnosed with RB between 1973 and 2009 were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. The study included 1,456 patients with a the mean follow-up time (SD) of 128.75 (113.74) months and a mean age (SD) of 1.4 (2.6) years. This study analyzed socioeconomic, staging and treatment factors available in the SEER database for RB. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to analyze time-to-failure data. The two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used for univariate analysis and the Cox proportional hazards model was used for multivariate analysis. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was computed for predictors. SEER stage was the most significant predictive pretreatment factor. The identified socioeconomic barriers included ethnicity and rural-urban residence status that led to a 3% decrease in RB cause-specific survival. Thus, eliminating barriers to treatment is crucial for reducing the outcome disparities.