Citation

Sayyid RK, Wallis CJD, Dymanus K, Jazzar U, Goldberg H, Williams SB, Klaassen Z. Ann. Transl. Med. 2020; 8(6): 272.

Affiliation

Georgia Cancer Center, Augusta, GA, USA.

Comment On:

Ann Transl Med 2019;7(22):658.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, AME Publishing)

DOI

10.21037/atm.2020.02.73

PMID

32355716

PMCID

PMC7186707

Abstract

Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States (1). It is well-established that the risk of suicide increases approximately two-fold in cancer patients, with reported rates of 31.4 and 16.7/100,000 person-years in cancer patients and the general population, respectively (2). There has been improved awareness in the urologic community regarding the heightened risk of suicide amongst patients with urologic malignancies, and numerous efforts have been made to identify those specific patients at highest risk for such an event.

Zhou et al. recently reported on suicide rates of over five million patients with various solid organ malignancies, with a specific focus on the adolescent and young adult (AYA) population, using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The suicide mortality rates (SMR) were similar in the AYA and general populations (0.14% vs. 0.15%, P=0.15). Male sex, Caucasian race and unmarried status were associated with increased risk of suicide in both populations (3). These results are consistent with previously published reports in the urologic literature, which identified increasing age, male sex, Caucasian race, and distant disease as predictors of suicide risk in prostate, bladder, kidney, testis, and penile cancer patients (4).

Notably, the second and third highest SMRs were amongst patients with bladder (0.37%) and prostate cancer (0.29%), with only nasopharyngeal cancer patients (0.38%) having a worse SMR. Furthermore, amongst all unmarried cancer patients, those with kidney and renal pelvis cancer were most likely to commit suicide in both the AYA [odds ratio (OR) 4.40, 95% CI: 1.38–16.91, P=0.0017) and general (OR 1.97, 95% CI: 1.52–2.56, P<0.001) populations (3). These findings highlight the significantly increased risk of suicide in patients with urologic malignancies ...

Language: en