Hispanics and blacks with melanoma more likely to be diagnosed at a l...( Hispanic and black patients in Florida'...),Health

Hispanic and black patients in Florida's Miami-Dade County are more likely than white patients to have a more advanced stage of melanoma at the time of diagnosis of the disease, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The skin cancer melanoma has become increasingly more common, with incidence rates increasing 2.4 percent annually in the United States over the past decade, according to background information in the article. Because light-skinned individuals are at higher risk for melanoma, much of the prevention and early detection efforts have targeted white populations; this may help explain improving survival rates (up to 92 percent from 68 percent in the 1970s) among whites. However, similar progress has not been seen among black and Hispanic populations.

Shasa Hu, M.D., University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and colleagues reviewed 1,690 melanoma cases reported in Miami-Dade County between 1997 and 2002. Of those, 1,176 occurred in white patients, 485 in Hispanic patients and 29 in non-Hispanic black patients.

Hispanic and black patients were both more likely to have advanced-stage melanomas than white patients. Of the melanoma patients, 16 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of blacks had cancer that had already metastasized (spread to other organs and tissues) at the time it was diagnosed, compared with 9 percent of whites. Black patients had the highest rate, 52 percent, of regional- or distant-stage melanoma, the two most severe stages that indicate the cancer has spread to other lymph nodes or organs; this compares to 26 percent for Hispanics and 16 percent for whites. White patients were more likely to be diagnosed with earlier stages of melanoma, including melanoma in situ, or cases in which the cancer cells are found only in the outer layer of skin, and local melanoma, in which cancer has spread to the lower layers of skin but not to the surrounding lymp
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Contact: Jeanne Antol Krull
305-243-4853
JAMA and Archives Journals
19-Jun-2006

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