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Dr. Amar J. Srivastava
States with a decreased number of women’s clinics per capita between 2010 and 2013 were found to have less screening for cervical cancer, more advanced stage of cervical cancer at presentation, and higher mortality from cervical cancer than states with no decrease in clinics, reported lead author Amar J. Srivastava, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis, who also noted that these changes occurred within a relatively short time frame.
“We know that women are generally diagnosed through the utilization of Pap smears,” Dr. Srivastava said during a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology. “These are low-cost tests that are available at multiple low-cost women’s health clinics. Unfortunately ... over the course of the past decade, we’ve seen a significant reduction of these clinics throughout the United States.”
“Between 2010 and 2013, which is the period of interest in this study, we know that about 100 of these women’s health clinics closed,” Dr. Srivastava said. “This was due to a combination of several factors; some of it was due to funding, some of it was due to restructuring of the clinics, and there were also laws passed throughout many states that ultimately led to the closure of many clinics.”
To determine the impact of these closures, the investigators first divided states into those that had women’s clinic closures between 2010 and 2013 and those that did not. Comparisons between these two cohorts involved the use of two databases. The first was the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Study (BRFSS), which provided data from 197,143 cases, enabling assessment of differences between screening availability. The second database was the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry, which provided data from 10,652 patients, facilitating comparisons of stage at time of diagnosis and mortality rate.
Results were described in terms of relative differences between the two cohorts. For instance, screening rate among women with cervical cancer in states that had a decreased number of clinics was 1.63% lower than in states that did not lose clinics. This disparity was more pronounced in specific demographic subgroups, including Hispanic women (–5.82%), women aged between 21 and 34 years (–5.19%), unmarried women (–4.10%), and uninsured women (–6.88%).
“Historically, these are marginalized, underserved groups, and unfortunately, it comes as no surprise that these were the groups of women who were most dramatically hit by these changes,” Dr. Srivastava said.
Early-stage diagnosis was also significantly less common in states that had a decreased number of clinics, by a margin of 13.2%. Finally, the overall mortality rate among women with cervical cancer was 36% higher in states with clinic closures, a difference that climbed to 40% when comparing only metro residents.
Connecting the dots, Dr. Srivastava suggested that the decreased availability of screening may have led to fewer diagnoses at an early stage, which is more curable than late-stage disease, ultimately translating to a higher mortality rate. After noting that this chain of causality cannot be confirmed, owing to the retrospective nature of the study, Dr. Srivastava finished his presentation with a call to action.
“These findings should really give us some pause,” he said, “as physicians, as people who care about other people, to spend some time, try to figure out what’s going on, and try to address this disparity.”
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Dr. Geraldine M. Jacobsen
After the presentation, Geraldine M. Jacobsen, MD, chair of radiation oncology at West Virginia University Cancer Institute, in Morgantown, W.V., echoed Dr. Srivastava’s concern.
“This study really raises broader questions,” Dr. Jacobsen said. “In the United States we’re always engaged in an ongoing dialogue about health care, health care policy, [and] health care costs. But a study like this brings to us the human face of what these dialogues mean. Policy affects people, and if we make changes in health care policy or health care legislation, we’re impacting people’s health and people’s lives.”
The investigators disclosed relationships with Phelps County Regional Medical Center, the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and ASTRO.
SOURCE: Srivastava AJ et al. ASTRO 2019, Abstract 202.