Head and neck cancer in blacks.

Our experience at University Hospitals of Cleveland (UHOC), Cuyahoga County, Ohio, led us to suspect an increased incidence of head and neck cancer in blacks. We reviewed our tumor registry records from 1975 to 1989 analyzing for age, sex, race, and head and neck site of disease. Head and neck cancers comprised 6.1% of all cancers at UHOC. This is in comparison with 3.7% of all cancers in Cuyahoga County and an estimated 5.5% nationally. This higher proportion of head and neck cancer was observed primarily in black men and women in whom these cancers made up 7.7% of all cancers compared with 5.7% in whites. Both black men and women had a higher percentage of these cancers out of all cancers for their respective sex and race than whites. For all head and neck cancer sites except the salivary glands, blacks were observed to be two to four times more likely than whites to be diagnosed before the age of 50 years (P < .01). These findings thus substantiated an increased incidence and earlier age of onset of head and neck cancers in blacks compared with whites.