Survivorship from large bowel cancer among Caucasians and Japanese in Hawaii.

From 1960 through 1973, the Hawaii Tumor Registry identified 781 Caucasian and 1073 Japanese cases of large bowel cancer. Survivorship analysis revealed that Japanese patients had a 32% higher 5-year relative survival rate than Caucasians. Further analyses showed that colon cancer cases did better than rectal cases, and patients diagnosed before 65 years of age fared better than cases diagnosed at an older age. As expected, patients with localized disease lived much longer than those who had more advanced disease. Men and women were similar in their survival from large bowel cancer. Histologic grade of the lesion, socioeconomic variables, behavioral practices and other factors which may affect survivorship by race could not be included in this study. Until such factors are also incoporated in the analyses, the observed results are only suggestive of a racial difference in survivorship.