Black men with localized prostate cancer had better treatment- and disease-specific outcomes than white men when treated with definitive radiotherapy, according to the results of a meta-analysis.
Even though Black men were more likely to present with high-risk features, they were less likely to experience biochemical recurrence, distant metastases, and prostate cancer-specific mortality, reported Amar Kishan, MD, of the University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues.
There were no significant differences, however, in time to all-cause mortality, time to other-cause mortality, and distant metastases or death between Black and white men.
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These results were “novel and unexpected” and “provide high-level evidence to question the belief that prostate cancer among Black men necessarily portends a worse prognosis compared with white men,” Kishan and colleagues wrote.
“This belief may be a factor in differences in the approach to cancer therapy, thereby leading to the use of more aggressive treatments than might be necessary, which carry greater risks of decreasing the quality of life and distracting attention from other important factors associated with outcome and sources of disparity, such as access to care.”
