Disparities in disease presentation in the four screenable cancers according to health insurance status.
OBJECTIVE
Current guidelines support the use of screening for early detection in breast, prostate, colorectal and cervical cancer. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether insurance status predicts for more advanced disease in these four currently screened cancers.


METHODS
The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database was queried for breast, prostate, colorectal and cervix in patients aged 18-64 years. The database was queried from 2007 to 2011, with 425,614 patients with known insurance status included.


METHODS
Multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate insurance status and cancer presentation.


RESULTS
Under multivariate analysis for breast cancer, uninsured patients more often had invasive disease (odds ratio [OR]: 1.55), T- (OR: 2.00), N- (OR: 1.59) stage, and metastatic disease (OR: 3.48), and were more often high-grade (OR: 1.21). For prostate cancer, uninsured patients again presented more commonly with higher T-stage (OR: 1.45), nodal (OR: 2.90) and metastatic (OR: 4.98) disease, in addition to higher prostate-specific antigen (OR: 2.85) and Gleason score (OR: 1.65). Colorectal cancer had similar findings with uninsured individuals presenting with more invasive disease (OR: 1.78), higher T (OR: 1.86), N (OR: 1.22), and M (OR: 1.58) stage, in addition to higher carcinoembryonic antigen levels (OR: 1.66). Similar results were seen for cervical cancer with uninsured having higher T (OR: 2.03), N (OR: 1.21), and M (OR: 1.45) stage.


CONCLUSIONS
In the four cancers detected by screening exams, those without health insurance present with more advanced disease, with higher stage and grade, and more elevated tumour markers.
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
A
A
Amini
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
B L
BL
Jones
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
N
N
Yeh
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Divisions of Gynecologic Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
S R
SR
Guntupalli
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
B D
BD
Kavanagh
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
S D
SD
Karam
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA; Colorado Department of Public Health Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening and Prevention Advisory Board, USA. Electronic address: christine.fisher@ucdenver.edu.
C M
CM
Fisher
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D055088:Early Detection of Cancer; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D019458:Insurance Coverage / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D017057:Medically Uninsured / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D014481:United States; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D055815:Young Adult
Affordable Care Act (ACA); Cancer screening; Disparities; Health insurance; SEER