Clinical and socioeconomic determinants of survival in biliary tract adenocarcinomas

Despite advances in detection and treatments, biliary tract cancers continue to have poor survival outcomes. Currently, there is limited data investigating the significance of socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and environmental factors in biliary tract cancer survival.

To investigate how socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity are associated with survival.

Data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database for biliary and gallbladder adenocarcinomas were extracted from 1975 to 2016. Socioeconomic data included smoking, poverty level, education, adjusted household income, and percentage of foreign-born persons and urban population. Survival was calculated with Cox proportional hazards models for death in the 5-year period following diagnosis.

Our study included 15883 gallbladder, 11466 intrahepatic biliary, 12869 extrahepatic biliary and 7268 ampulla of Vater adenocarcinoma cases. When analyzing county-specific demographics, patients from counties with higher incomes were associated with higher survival rates [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.97, P <0.05]. Similarly, counties with a higher percentage of patients with a college level education and counties with a higher urban population had higher 5-year survival rates (HR = 0.96, P = 0.002 and HR = 0.97, P = 0.004, respectively).

Worse survival outcomes were observed in lower income counties while higher income and education level were associated with higher 5-year overall survival among gallbladder and biliary malignancies.