Racial Differences in Mortality Among Medicare Recipients After Treatment for Localized Prostate Cancer

Background: Prostate cancer mortality is higher among black American men than among white American men. We investigated whether racial disparities in outcomes of clini-cally localized prostate cancer vary by treatment (surgery, radiation therapy, or nonaggressive treatment). Methods: Merged Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Pro-gram (SEER) and Medicare files provided data (on treat-ment modality, age, race, cancer stage, tumor grade, census tract socioeconomic status, and date of death) on 5747 black and 38 242 white patients diagnosed at age 65 – 84 years with clinically localized prostate cancer between 1986 and 1996 in five SEER sites. Patients were followed through 1998. Racial differences in survival outcomes were assessed using Kaplan–Meier survival curves and Cox regression models. Results: The median survival tim