THURSDAY, July 6, 2023 (HealthDay News) — From 1999 to 2020, the overall cancer-specific mortality (CSM) rate decreased among Hispanic individuals; however, increases in specific cancer death rates were seen, according to a study published online June 29 in JAMA Oncology.

Isabella R. Pompa, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study to examine longitudinal cancer mortality trends among Hispanic individuals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER database was used to obtain age-adjusted cancer death rates between January 1999 and December 2020.

The researchers found that 12,644,869 patients died of cancer in the United States, and of these, 5.5 percent were Hispanic. Among Hispanic individuals, the overall CSM rate decreased by 1.3 percent annually. The overall CSM rate decreased more for Hispanic men than Hispanic women (average annual percent change [AAPC], −1.6 versus −1.0 percent). Among Hispanic individuals, death rates decreased for most cancer types, but increases were seen in mortality rates for liver cancer in Hispanic males (AAPC, 1.0 percent), while the rates of liver (AAPC, 1.0 percent), pancreas (AAPC, 0.2 percent), and uterine (AAPC, 1.6 percent) cancers increased among Hispanic women. Hispanic men aged 25 to 34 years had an increase in overall CSM rates (AAPC, 0.7 percent).

“The observed disparities in cancer mortality may be associated with increases in cancer incidence, financial and cultural barriers to health care, lack of cancer screenings, and diagnosis at advanced stages of the disease,” the authors write.

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