A major UK survey has shown that patients with urological cancer are 5-times more likely to commit suicide than people without cancer. The analysis also shows that patients with cancer generally are around 3-times more likely to commit suicide than the general population and the proportion of attempted suicides that result in successful suicide is higher patients with cancer and is especially high in patients with urological cancers.
This is the largest UK study looking at suicide in patients with cancer. The research, led by the University of Birmingham, retrospectively examined records from the England and Wales Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database, from the period 2001 to 2011. The HES data was linked to cause of death statistics from the Office of National Statistics.
The study, presented at the 33rd European Association of Urology Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, involved 980,761 patients with cancer. A total of 162 suicides and 1222 suicide attempts were recorded. In the general population, the suicide rate is 10 per 100,000 people. However, the all-cancer suicide rate was 30 per 100,000 people. Among those with renal cancer, the rate was 36 per 100,000 people, while in those with bladder cancer and prostate cancer suicide rates were 48 per 100,000 and 52 per 100,000, respectively. Median time to suicide was 175 days from diagnosis for kidney cancer, 846 days for prostate cancer and 1037 days for bladder cancer.
The authors theorised that the cause of the disparity in suicide rates between patients with urological cancers and those with other cancers may be multifactorial, including the possible social stigma associated with cancer of the urological tract. They advised that “formal identification of those at risk and early intervention should form the standard of care for patients diagnosed with urological cancers”.
