New research suggests the incidence of death from unintentional injury is higher among patients with cancer than among those in the general U.S. population.
The findings highlight the need for more initiatives to help recognize patients at risk of death from this category of injury, which is the third leading cause of death in the country, according to the study authors.
“The purpose of our study was to present a comprehensive analysis of death from unintentional injury among patients with cancer using a large population-based cohort,” wrote Kunyu Yang, MD, of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, and colleagues. Their report is in JAMA Network Open.
The retrospective study included 8,271,020 patients with cancer, 40,599 of whom died from unintentional injury. The researchers identified patients who received a new diagnosis of primary cancer between Jan. 1, 1973, and Dec. 31, 2015, from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database.
The mean age of study participants was 63.0 years, and most were diagnosed in the 2000-2009 period (41.6%) or the 2010-2015 period (27.6%).
The SEER data was compared with mortality data representative of the general U.S. population obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. Standardized mortality ratios and rates of death from unintentional injury were measured in both groups.
The rates of death from unintentional injury were 81.90 per 100,000 person-years in cancer patients and 51.21 per 100,000 person-years in the general population. The standardized mortality ratio was 1.60 (95% confidence interval, 1.58-1.61).
Factors associated with higher rates of death from unintentional injury among cancer patients included male sex (relative risk, 1.69; P less than .001), age greater than 80 years at diagnosis (RR, 2.91; P less than .001), and being unmarried (RR, 1.23; P less than .001).
“Rates of death from unintentional injury were the highest in patients with cancers of the liver (200.37 per 100,000 person-years), brain (175.04 per 100,000 person-years), larynx (148.78 per 100,000 person-years), and esophagus (144.98 per 100,000 person-years),” the researchers reported.
They acknowledged that a key limitation of this study was the potential role of reporting bias in death certificate analyses. As a result, death due to unintentional injury and death from suicide and homicide could have been misclassified.
“Cancer-related suicides, like all suicides, are preventable and should be viewed as cancer-related mortality. It is a silent killer with a peak incidence weeks after diagnosis – an undeniably hectic time for most patients and clinicians getting to know their patients,” said Daniel C. McFarland, DO, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He was not involved in this study.
“Suicide screening with appropriate systems in place to address suicidal thoughts and behavior is crucial for cancer patients throughout the trajectory of their care,” he added.
As with death from unintentional injury, higher rates of suicide have been reported among cancer patients in comparison to the general population (Nat Commun. 2019;10[1]:207).
No funding sources were reported for this study. The authors and Dr. McFarland disclosed no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Yang K et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2020 Feb 21. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.21647.