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Racial disparities in time to hematopoietic cell transplant among patients with hematologic malignancies at a large urban academic center

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 57, pages 1213–1215 (2022)Cite this article

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Black patients have lower rates of both autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplants (HCTs) in the United States [1]. Factors such as age, insurance and socioeconomic status (SES) play an integral role in transplant utilization and explain some of the observed differences [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. However, the impact of race and other factors on time to transplant from the date of transplant consult remains unclear.

We conducted a retrospective study of first consults for either an autologous or allogeneic HCT between year 2009 and 2016 at the Karmanos Cancer Institute (KCI), a large academic center located in Detroit, for the diagnosis of multiple myeloma (MM), non-Hodgkin Lymphomas (NHL), Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), or acute leukemia. Citizens of Canada and those with prior HCT were excluded. Neighborhood-level SES (NSES) has been shown to be a predictor of health outcomes even after controlling for individual-level SES [10, 11]. NSES estimates were created based on characteristics of the census tract of each patient’s home residence.

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Fig. 1: Cumulative incidence curves and subdistribution hazard ratio (SHR) of time to HCT within 6 months from consultation by race (Black vs. White, White as reference) with death as a competing risk.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

ES designed the study. HS, ES, SK, and KC collected data. HS wrote the manuscript. All authors read the manuscript, provided input, and approved the final version. This study was presented as an oral abstract at ASH 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oncology, Karmanos Cancer Institute/Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

    Harsh Shah, Seongho Kim, Scott Klimecki, Joseph Uberti, Charles A. Schiffer & Erlene Seymour

  2. Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Harsh Shah

  3. Wanye State Universitiy School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA

    Karl Charlson

  4. Department of Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Mark A. Fiala

  5. School of Social Work, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Mark A. Fiala

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  1. Harsh Shah
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  2. Seongho Kim
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Correspondence to Harsh Shah.

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Shah, H., Kim, S., Klimecki, S. et al. Racial disparities in time to hematopoietic cell transplant among patients with hematologic malignancies at a large urban academic center. Bone Marrow Transplant 57, 1213–1215 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-022-01706-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-022-01706-6

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