Abstract

Background

Black women living in southern states have the highest breast cancer mortality rate in the United States. The prognosis of de novo metastatic breast cancer is poor. Given these mortality rates, we are the first to link nationally representative data on breast cancer mortality hot spots (counties with high breast cancer mortality rates) with cancer mortality data in the United States and investigate the association of geographic breast cancer mortality hot spots with de novo metastatic breast cancer mortality among Black women.

Methods

We identified 7292 Black women diagnosed with de novo metastatic breast cancer in Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER). The county-level characteristics were obtained from 2014 County Health Rankings and linked to SEER. We used Cox proportional hazards models to calculate adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for mortality between hot spot and non–hot spot counties.

Results

Among 7292 patients, 393 (5.4%) resided in breast cancer mortality hot spots. Women residing in hot spots had similar risks of breast cancer–specific mortality (aHR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.85 to 1.15) and all-cause mortality (aHR = 0.97, 95% CI = 0.84 to 1.11) as women in non–hot spots after adjusting for individual and tumor-level factors and treatments. Additional adjustment for county-level characteristics did not impact mortality.

Conclusion

Living in a breast cancer mortality hot spot was not associated with de novo metastatic breast cancer mortality among Black women. Future research should begin to examine variation in both individual and population-level determinants, as well as in molecular and genetic determinants that underlie the aggressive nature of de novo metastatic breast cancer.

Details

Title
Breast Cancer Mortality Hot Spots Among Black Women With de Novo Metastatic Breast Cancer
Author
Han, Yunan 1 ; Langston, Marvin 2 ; Fuzzell, Lindsay 3 ; Khan, Saira 4 ; Lewis-Thames, Marquita W 5 ; Colditz, Graham A 6 ; Moore, Justin Xavier 7 

 Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA; Department of Breast Surgery, First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China 
 Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente, Northern California, Oakland, CA, USA 
 Department of Health Outcomes & Behavior, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL, USA 
 Epidemiology Program, College of Health Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA 
 Department of Medical Social Sciences, Center for Community Health, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA 
 Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA; Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA 
 Division of Epidemiology, Department of Population Health Sciences, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA 
Publication year
2021
Publication date
Feb 2021
Publisher
Oxford University Press
e-ISSN
25155091
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3170543072
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.