Epidemiologic observations from the American College of Surgeons' survey on prostate cancer

Data on the incidence and mortality from prostate cancer are available in this country and others, but there are few sources of information relating to widely prevalent clinical practices. The long- and short-term prostate cancer surveys conducted by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons offer a system of assessing patterns of cancer patient care in a large number of hospitals in the United States. Data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) System indicate that at every age blacks experience greater rates of incidence and mortality than whites. Comparisons of modes of diagnosis reported for black and white patients for 1974 and 1979 from the American College of Surgeons surveys show little difference between these groups, indicating that the excess in incidence among blacks is not attributable to differential patterns of diagnosis. The survey results also indicate that white patients appear to have a slight survival advantage in stages B, C, and D. The lower survival appears to be the product of relatively advanced stage of the disease rather than the result of biologically more malignant nature of prostate cancer in the blacks.