Appendiceal cancer — cancer of the appendix — is a rare malignancy that is usually found during surgery for acute appendicitis. Although the rate of appendectomies has been stable over the last two decades, the incidence of malignant appendiceal cancer increased 232% in the United States.
Andreana Holowatyj, PhD, MSCI, and colleagues conducted the first study of appendiceal cancer patterns and survival by race/ethnicity among patients younger than 50 in the U.S.
Reporting in the journal Gastroenterology, they found poorer disease outcomes among non-Hispanic Blacks compared with non-Hispanic whites, and among men compared with women. However, they observed no differences in survival between young Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites with appendiceal cancer.