TOPLINE:

Black patients with malignant cutaneous appendageal tumors wait weeks longer for treatment than White patients and, on average, die from the disease 18 months earlier. 

METHODOLOGY:

• The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database was queried for cases of malignant cutaneous appendageal tumors, a rare form of skin cancer.
• Cases include those with histologies for skin appendage carcinoma, sweat gland adenocarcinoma, apocrine adenocarcinoma, malignant nodular hidradenoma, malignant eccrine spiradenoma, sclerosing sweat duct carcinoma, eccrine papillary adenocarcinoma, malignant eccrine poroma, sebaceous adenocarcinoma, eccrine adenocarcinoma, and ceruminous adenocarcinoma.
• Only skin primary sites were included.

TAKEAWAY:

• Among 1806 patients of various racial groups, Black and Hispanic individuals had the longest median wait from diagnosis to treatment (48.5 and 44 days, respectively) compared with White individuals (36 days; P < .01).
• White patients were less likely to get adjuvant chemotherapy (2.5%) than Hispanic (6.3%) and Black (7.0%; P < .05) patients (surgery is considered standard of care).
• Among 653 deceased patients (surviving patient information was incomplete), mean survival time for Black patients was 56 months compared with 74 months for White patients (P = .03). Other comparisons between racial groups were not statistically significant. The mean survival time for Hispanic patients was 67.5 months.

IN PRACTICE:

“Delays in care combined with potentially greater disease severity may contribute to reduced survival, particularly among Black patients,” the authors wrote. The analysis, they added, “revealed greater chemotherapy use among Hispanic and Black patients, potentially reflecting more aggressive disease.”

SOURCE:

The study was conducted by Simona A. Alomary, medical student, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey, and Susan C. Taylor, MD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues. Results were presented as a poster at the Skin of Color Society (SOCS) Annual Scientific Symposium 2026 in Denver.

LIMITATIONS:

The number of Black patients in the survival sample was small (n = 26). Also, “these findings are limited by inherent constraints of the SEER database, including incomplete or misclassified treatment variables and unmeasured confounders,” the authors wrote.

DISCLOSURES:

Taylor disclosed having relationships with AbbVie, Arcutis, Armis, Avita, Beiersdorf, Biorez, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cara Therapeutics, Dior, Eli Lilly, EPI, Evolus, Galderma, Glo Getter, Hugel America, Incyte, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal USA, Medscape, MJH, Pfizer, Piction, Sanofi, Scientis US, UCB, and Vichy. Another author disclosed having relationships with Beiersdorf, MJH LifeSciences, Dermatology Times, and HealthCentral. Alomary and the other authors had no disclosures.