Background: Socioeconomic factors including race, ethnicity, and poverty level have been associated with disparities in survival among adult patients with acute leukemia. Insurance status is also likely to affect survival outcomes in these patients but has not been well studied. We investigated the impact of insurance status at time of diagnosis on survival in adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Patients and methods: Adult patients diagnosed with B-lineage ALL between January 1, 2007 and October 31, 2017 were included, with follow-up through January 19, 2018. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to estimate overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) for the 2 groups. Cox proportional hazard regression methods were used for univariate and multivariate analyses.
Results: A total of 136 patients were included in the study, 29 without insurance and 107 with insurance at time of diagnosis. Patients without insurance were younger and more likely to be Hispanic or Latino compared with insured patients. When controlling for confounding variables, patients without insurance had worse PFS. There was no statistically significant difference in OS between the 2 groups. Hispanic or Latino ethnicity was associated with improved PFS and OS in multivariate analyses.
Conclusions: Adult patients with ALL without health insurance at time of diagnosis had worse PFS when controlling for other relevant clinical factors. Lack of insurance may be an obstacle to timely, effective maintenance therapy in the outpatient setting. Further research is needed to understand how insurance status impacts survival and ways to mitigate any disparities.
Keywords: Chemotherapy; Disparities; Hispanic or Latino; Maintenance; Socioeconomic factors.
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