Survival outcomes of secondary cancers in patients with waldenström macroglobulinemia: An analysis of the SEER database

Abstract

We hypothesized that survival outcomes of WM patients who develop SM is distinct from the general population of individuals who develop those same malignancies. Using the SEER-18 data (2000–2011), we identified patients with cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, colorectum, bladder, melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and acute leukemia, and compared their outcomes according to having antecedent WM or not. The outcome of interest was overall survival (OS), which was analyzed in proportional-hazard models adjusted for age, sex, race, and stage. We found that patients with WM who developed SM were older than population controls with those same cancers. In the multivariate analysis, WM cases with colorectal cancer (HR 1.97; P < 0.001), melanoma (HR 2.63; P < 0.001) and NHL (HR = 1.35; P = 0.02) had worse OS than controls with those respective cancers. WM patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma also had worse OS (HR = 1.86; P = 0.008). The utilization of surgery and radiation was similar between WM cases and controls, except lower rates of prostatectomy and melanoma surgery among WM patients. The survival of WM patients with colorectal cancer, melanoma, and NHL is worse than among general population controls, arguing in favor of age-appropriate cancer screening. Am. J. Hematol. 90:696–701, 2015.