ATA: Thyroid Cancer Presents at More Advanced Stage in Poor

(HealthDay News) – The odds of presenting with thyroid cancer at an advanced stage are increased for those with low socioeconomic status, but seem to be decreasing slightly over time, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Thyroid Association (ATA), held from Sept 19–23 in Montreal.

Stan Van Uum, MD, PhD, from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and colleagues examined the correlation between socioeconomic status and the stage of thyroid cancer at presentation using data from the Canadian Thyroid Cancer Consortium for patients who presented with documented thyroid cancer between January 1998 and December 2010. Socioeconomic data were assigned from the Canadian Census of Population for 1,334 patients.

The researchers found that the odds of a more advanced stage of thyroid cancer at presentation were increased for the lowest socioeconomic status quintile (odds ratio [OR], 1.718); for male vs. female gender (OR, 2.077); and for advanced age (OR, 1.010; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1–1.02). Compared with the baseline year, there was a decrease in the odds of advanced stage at presentation for each year (OR, 0.962; 95% CI, 0.93–1).

“Socioeconomic status is an important health indicator for a number of cancers and other diseases. These new data shed light on yet another area — the time of thyroid cancer diagnoses — in which there is a need to close [the] gap on this disparity,” Elizabeth Pearce, MD, program co-chair of the annual ATA meeting, said in a statement.

Abstract No. Poster 90
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