Identifying Determinants of Disparities in Lung Cancer Survival Rates from Electronic Health Record Data

The goal of this pilot study was to identify significant factors that affect disparities in lung cancer survival. A de-identified dataset was generated by querying electronic health records (EHR) from an academic medical center in New York City between January 2003 and November 2020. Socio-demographic characteristics, cancer stage, and genetic profile were analyzed using logistic regression. Two subsets of adult patients were identified: patients who were deceased less than 1 year after diagnosis and patients who survived over 5 years after diagnosis. Male, Black and Hispanic patients and those who were diagnosed in later stages were the people most susceptible to a shorter length of survival after cancer diagnoses. In addition, we identified three genetic oncodrivers (KRAS, EGFR and TP53) which were highly correlated with the length of survival after lung cancer diagnoses and their distribution was associated with race. We concluded that EHR data provide important insights on cancer survival disparities.