Abstract:
This study aims to examine the survival disparity between Māori men and New Zealand (NZ) Europeans diagnosed with prostate cancer. We identified men aged 40+ years in the Midland Cancer Network region registered with prostate cancer in 2007-2010 in the Cancer Registry. Data were extracted from patient notes of all Māori men and a sample of NZ Europeans. The survival disparity between Māori men and Europeans was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional-hazards regression models after adjusting for other factors. This study included 535 men with prostate cancer (135 Māori men and 400 Europeans). The 5-year cancer-specific survival was 98.6% for men diagnosed with localised cancer, 88.8% for locally advanced disease and 19.1% for metastatic cancer. The all-cause survival and the cancer-specific survival were both significantly poorer for Māori men than for NZ Europeans (log rank test: P = 0.004, 0.006 respectively). The hazard ratio of cancer-specific survival for Māori men was 2.01 (95% CI: 1.21-3.36) compared with NZ Europeans. Māori men with prostate cancer had poorer all-cause survival and cancer-specific survival than NZ Europeans. Māori men were at risk of having more advanced disease at diagnosis, which explains most of the survival inequity between Māori men and NZ Europeans.