Survey Shows Higher Suicide Rate in Patients With Urologic Cancers
Posted: Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Patients with urologic cancer—such as prostate, bladder, or kidney cancer—are five times more likely to commit suicide than people without cancer, according to a survey presented at the 2018 European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Copenhagen (Abstract 68). The research team, which was led by Prashant Patel, MBBS, MS, FRCSEd, PhD, FRCSEd(Urol), of the University of Birmingham, UK, also noted that patients with cancer generally were more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
“This is important,” said first author Mehran Afshar, PhD, MBBS, MRCP, PGDip(Onc), of St George’s Hospital, London. “We know that people who attempt suicide are at a higher risk of subsequently being successful in completing a suicide, and we have shown this ‘intent’ to commit to be far higher in our cancer population, thus confirming a real need to address psychological issues early on in the management of these patients.”
The investigators retrospectively analyzed the records of patients diagnosed with cancer from the England and Wales Hospital Episode Statistics database from 2001 to 2011. They found the all-cancer suicide rate was 30 per 100,000 people. However, in those with urologic cancers, the figures were 36 suicides per 100,000 people with kidney cancer, 48 suicides per 100,000 people with bladder cancer, and 52 suicides per 100,000 people with prostate cancer. Although in the general population there is an average of 1 successful suicide for every 25 attempts, the numbers drop in those with kidney cancer (1 suicide for every 10 attempts) as well as in those with bladder and prostate cancers (1 suicide for every 7 attempts).