Black patients who are newly diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) receive worse and less-timely guideline-concordant care, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Leticia M. Nogueira, PhD, MPH, and colleagues selected individuals aged 18 to 49 racialized as non-Hispanic Black and White (self-identified) who were newly diagnosed with CRC from 2004 to 2019. The study team considered individuals who received recommended care, which included staging, surgery, lymph node evaluation, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, to have received guideline-concordant care. Overall, 20.8% of the 84,882 patients with colon cancer and 14.5% of the 62,573 with rectal cancer were racialized as Black. The likelihood of not receiving guideline-concordant care for colon and rectal cancers was increased for individuals racialized as Black (adjusted HRs, 1.18 and 1.27, respectively). When compared with White patients, Black patients had increased time to adjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer and neoadjuvant chemoradiation for rectal cancer.
