background: Little scientific evidence is available on survival outcomes of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer according to race and insurance status. The objective of this study was to investigate whether there is an association between race and survival in patients with nasopharyngeal cancer.

methods: This was a retrospective cohort using secondary data analysis from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) database. Patients with a histologically confirmed diagnosis of primary nasopharyngeal cancer reported to SEER between 2007 and 2016 who were ≥18 years were included in the study. Alaska Natives or Native Americans, those diagnosed with a benign neoplasm deceased due to a nasopharyngeal cancer without a previous diagnosis of it, with an unknown cause of death, and those missing follow up data were excluded from the analysis. The main outcome variable was survival and the main exposure variable race (white, black, Asian Pacific Islanders). STATA was used to calculate unadjusted and adjusted hazard ratios (HR) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI).

results: Five-year cause-specific adjusted hazard ratios of Blacks and Asian Pacific Islanders as compared with Whites were 0.85 (95% CI 0.58, 1.23) and 0.74 (95% CI 0.59, 0.92), respectively. Similarly, the adjusted hazard ratios of uninsured patients and Medicaid patients as compared with patients with private insurance were 0.58 (95% CI 0.36-0.91) and 0.42 (95% CI 0.27-0.65), respectively.

conclusion: This study shows that in patients diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer, Asian Pacific Islanders had a higher 5-year survival rates when compared with Whites.