Premium
Hematopoietic and lymphoproliferative cancer among male veterans using the veterans administration medical system
Author(s) -
Namboodiri Kadambari K.,
Harris Randall E.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0142(19910901)68:5<1123::aid-cncr2820680540>3.0.co;2-l
Subject(s) - medicine , epidemiology , population , chronic lymphocytic leukemia , cancer , incidence (geometry) , leukemia , oncology , demography , environmental health , physics , sociology , optics
Hematopoietic and lymphoproliferative cancer risk among the 3.7 million United States male veterans who use the Veterans Administration (VA) medical system annually was assessed using age‐specific incidence curves and cumulative incidence rates. Relative risks comparing the VA with general population risk estimates from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data were increased significantly for all malignancies examined. The VA sample showed risk increases of 93% for Hodgkin's disease, 20% for non‐Hodgkin's lymphomas, 51% for multiple myelomas, and 40% for all leukemias. Among the leukemia subtypes, the observed risk increases were 54%, 23%, 80%, and 46% for lymphocytic, granulocytic, monocytic, and other forms of leukemia, respectively. The large size of the sample and the consistency of risk estimates with two different methods confer validity and strength to these findings. The possible relevance of the high prevalence of tobacco and alcohol use in this population sample to the current findings is discussed and the need for further analytic investigations to explain the increases in risk is emphasized.