Racial and socioeconomic factors in cancer survival. A comparison of veterans administration results with selected studies

Abstract

The survival experience of 46,000 Veterans Administration (VA) male cancer patients was analyzed and compared with the results of three other studies. In the VA data, no significant differences were found between white and black patient cancer survival rates except for bladder cancer; this observation differs from those in other studies. In the VA, all patients receive the same treatment with no distinctions whereas most U. S. hospitals place their patients into categories based on ability to pay. This factor probably accounts for the lack of racial differences in survival rates in the VA and the existence of racial or socioeconomic differences in survival rates in the other studies.