Incidence of Suicide in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer

David Kam · Andrew Salib · George Gorgy · Tapan D. Patel · Eric T. Carniol · Jean Anderson Eloy +2 more

211 citations0/0 files storedJAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Suicide and Self-Harm Studies Head and Neck Cancer Studies Cancer survivorship and care

Abstract

IMPORTANCE: Suicide rates among patients with cancer in the US are significantly higher than those of the general population. To our knowledge, large cohort studies examining suicide rates among patients with head and neck cancer have not been performed. OBJECTIVE: To identify incidence rate, trends, and risk factors of suicide in patients with cancer of the head and neck. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a retrospective cohort study of geographic areas served by the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. In total, 350,413 cases of patients with head and neck cancer were recorded within the SEER registry between 1973 and 2011. Data analyses were performed in 2014. Incidence data were calculated from the subset of that population that had the cause of death category coded as "suicide and self-inflicted injury." EXPOSURES: Patients diagnosed as having a primary cancer of the head and neck region. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Influence of demographic factors, anatomic site of tumor, disease stage, and time since diagnosis on risk for suicide. RESULTS: Among 350,413 SEER registry patients with head and neck cancer, observed for 2,263,376 person-years, 857 suicides were identified with an age-, sex-, and race-adjusted suicide rate of 37.9/100,000 person-years. In contrast, the US general population suicide rate was 11.8 per 100,000 person-years. Suicide rates were higher in those treated with radiation alone (standardized mortality ratio [SMR], 5.12; 95% CI, 3.83-6.41) compared with those treated with surgery alone (SMR, 2.57; 95% CI, 1.66-3.49). The highest suicide risk was seen in patients with cancers of the hypopharynx (SMR, 13.91; 95% CI, 11.78-16.03) and larynx (SMR, 5.48; 95% CI, 4.14-6.81). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Patients with head and neck cancer have more than 3 times the incidence of suicide compared with the general US population. Furthermore, suicide rates were highest among those with cancers of the larynx and hypopharynx.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 211 citations exist upstream.

References

2008Suicide and Suicidal Behavior 2008Incidence of Suicide in Persons With Cancer 2006Warning Signs for Suicide: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications 2005Evaluating Iatrogenic Risk of Youth Suicide Screening Programs 2011A Literature Review of Suicide in Cancer Patients

Cited by

2020Incidence of suicide death in patients with cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis 2018Prevalence and Risk Factors of Suicidal Ideation among Patients with Head and Neck Cancer: Longitudinal Study

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.