In a Californian study on head and neck cancers (ENT cancers), women seem to be treated less well than men and die more from them.
Gender inequalities exist even in cancer. A study presented at the American Congress of Oncology, ASCO, in Chicago, reveals a glaring inequality between men and women.
In an analysis on the treatment and prognosis of head and neck cancers (ENT cancers), and carried out in the largest treatment center in the USA, women would be treated less well than men. If surgery is as common in women as in men, only 35% of women have received intensive chemotherapy compared to 46% of men) and this undertreatment results in excess mortality in women compared to men.
A study on care in the city
This is an analysis of a Californian cancer registry which was carried out with a view to improving the management of cancers in “real life” (compared to clinical studies where patients are very selected). The analysis concerned 223 women and 661 men suffering from ENT cancer, stages II to IV-B, treated in one of the largest healthcare organizations: the Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
In addition to obvious under-treatment with intensive chemotherapy, the researchers were surprised to find that women received radiation therapy less often (60%) than men (70%). In addition, during a median follow-up of 2.9 years, this undertreatment is associated with a cancer death rate in women nearly twice as high as in men.
Study finds gender disparities in head and neck cancer treatment and outcomes https://t.co/l35VN02vGR
– ASCO (@ASCO) June 1, 2018
Several possible explanations
Taken as a whole, these results raise the possibility that women are actually treated less well than men, but the authors looked at whether particularities related to the patients could not explain these differences.
Head and neck cancers are generally more common in men than in women. It has been researched whether women are in poorer health than men, which could have explained that oncologists forgo intensive treatment more often at home, but this is not the case. Another explanatory factor may be the exact location of the cancer and it appears that women have cancer in the mouth less often than men.
This is important because many oral cancers are caused by chronic infection with the papillomavirus (HPV virus). However, these cancers generally respond better to treatment and their prognosis is better.
In this study, only 22.6% of women had cancer related to HPV infection compared to 77.4% of men. For oral cancer, only 38% of women have HPV cancer compared to 55% of men.
This study therefore highlights surprising differences in care between men and women and researchers are continuing their analyzes to better understand the reasons in order to correct these inequalities.
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