Factors associated with survival differences between black women and white women with cancer of the uterine corpus.

Prognostic factors leading to the survival advantage of white women over black women with uterine corpus cancer were evaluated by using a series of patients diagnosed from 1973-1977 in three geographic areas of the United States participating in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. Higher survival rates were observed among women under age 55 years, with stage I disease, and living in higher socioeconomic census tracts. Significant survival differences by race for patients with adenocarcinomas were found at almost all factor levels. Within each racial group, patients with adenocarcinomas had better prognosis than did those with sarcomas. A multivariate analysis found stage of disease and age at diagnosis to be the major predictors of survival among women with adenocarcinomas of the uterine corpus, followed by race, median family income, and mean highest education received. Adjustment of the black survival rates for these factors reduced the gap among patients with adenocarcinomas, but significant differences in survival between blacks and whites remained. Race was not a predictive factor for survival of patients with sarcomas, but age at diagnosis, stage of disease, and education were. After adjustment for the significant factors, prognosis was equally poor for black patients and white patients with sarcomas of the uterine corpus. These findings suggest that, even when controlling for known markers of racial differences, there remain other underlying prognostic factors associated with survival of black women and white women with adenocarcinomas of the uterine corpus that have yet to be determined.