Clinical and Translational Research
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Apr 15, 2024; 16(4): 1374-1383
Published online Apr 15, 2024. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v16.i4.1374
Clinical and socioeconomic determinants of survival in biliary tract adenocarcinomas
Laura Sahyoun, Kay Chen, Cynthia Tsay, George Chen, Petr Protiva
Laura Sahyoun, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY 10065, United States
Kay Chen, Gastroenterology Section, Jennifer Moreno VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA 92161, United States
Kay Chen, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States
Cynthia Tsay, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD 21287, United States
George Chen, Petr Protiva, Department of Digestive Diseases, Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, CT 06520, United States
Petr Protiva, Department of Gastroenterology, VA Connecticut Health Care System, West Haven, CT 06516, United States
Author contributions: All authors performed conceptualization, writing of original draft, review and editing; Sahyoun L performed methodology, investigation, and visualization; Protiva P performed data curation, statistical analysis, methodology, validation, and supervision.
Institutional review board statement: All information regarding each patient from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database is deidentified; therefore, data from the National Cancer Institute SEER Program does not require institutional review board (IRB) approval or exemption determination.
Informed consent statement: Signed informed consent was not needed for this study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Laura Sahyoun, MD, Academic Fellow, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Weill Cornell Medicine, 525 East 68 Street, New York, NY 10065, United States. las4024@med.cornell.edu
Received: September 17, 2023
Peer-review started: September 17, 2023
First decision: December 1, 2023
Revised: December 16, 2023
Accepted: February 1, 2024
Article in press: February 1, 2024
Published online: April 15, 2024
Processing time: 206 Days and 5.4 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Despite advances in detection and treatment, biliary tract cancers continue to exhibit poor survival outcomes.

Research motivation

Currently, limited data exist on the significance of socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and environmental factors in biliary tract cancer survival.

Research objectives

Our objective was to comprehensively evaluate the impact of socioeconomic factors on survival in biliary tract cancer.

Research methods

This study compared survival outcomes among patients with hepatobiliary adenocarcinomas based on socioeconomic indicators, including smoking status, poverty level, level of education, adjusted household income, percentage of urban population, and foreign-born individuals.

Research results

This study provided a large study sample size of hepatobiliary cancer despite low incidence rates. We found that college-level education and urban population was associated with higher overall 5-year survival.

Research conclusions

To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study to assess the role of socioeconomic factors in hepatobiliary cancer survival outcomes. By utilizing national data representative of the United States cancer population, we achieved a large sample size of hepatobiliary cancer cases, despite their low incidence rates to identify other factors that impact overall survival.

Research perspectives

Future studies targeting socioeconomic characteristics associated with poorer survival outcomes are warranted to determine potential etiologies and develop treatment strategies for improving outcomes in these groups.