Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 14, 2016; 22(38): 8584-8595
Published online Oct 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i38.8584
Racial/ethnic disparities in hepatocellular carcinoma treatment and survival in California, 1988-2012
Susan L Stewart, Sandy L Kwong, Christopher L Bowlus, Tung T Nguyen, Annette E Maxwell, Roshan Bastani, Eric W Chak, Moon S Chen Jr
Susan L Stewart, Division of Biostatistics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Sandy L Kwong, California Department of Public Health, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Christopher L Bowlus, Tung Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Tung T Nguyen, Eric W Chak, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94101, United States
Annette E Maxwell, Roshan Bastani, UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity, Fielding School of Public Health and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
Moon S Chen Jr, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Moon S Chen Jr, Cancer Control/Cancer Health Disparities, University of California, Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Moon S Chen Jr, PhD, MPH., Professor, Associate Director, Cancer Control/Cancer Health Disparities, University of California, Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, 2450 48th Street, Suite 1600, Sacramento, CA 95817, United States. mschenjr@ucdavis.edu
Telephone: +1-916-7345800
Received: June 28, 2016
Peer-review started: June 28, 2016
First decision: July 29, 2016
Revised: August 16, 2016
Accepted: September 12, 2016
Article in press: September 12, 2016
Published online: October 14, 2016
Processing time: 106 Days and 7.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We found substantial racial/ethnic differences in treatment and survival in our analysis of 33270 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma from the world’s largest cancer registry in a single geo-political jurisdiction, diagnosed over a 25-year period and disaggregated into 15 racial/ethnic categories. Such granularity provides more precise identification of populations at risk by race/ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic status, and stage of disease so that targeted interventions to mitigate disparities can be developed.