A new study has found a direct correlation between a person's socioeconomic status and their survival rate from cancer, with patients living in high socioeconomic areas outliving their counterparts who reside in low socioeconomic areas.
In the study conducted by Baruch Weizman and Nili Golan of Bar-Ilan University's Azrieli Faculty of Medicine and led by Dr. Ohad Ronen, researchers have reviewed data collected from about 12,000 head and neck cancer patients over the span of 18 years. They correlated site of residence and socioeconomic status with overall survival, controlling for prognostic factors that included tumor site, stage, age, sex, and ethnic group.
They found, for example, that patients in stage 3 from a high socioeconomic status had a longer median survival rate of 1.5 years than patients in the low-status group.
In addition, patients from high socioeconomic areas had an 85% overall 5-year survival rate compared to just 71% in patients from low socioeconomic areas.