Adam Kittai, MD, Discusses Racial Disparities in CLL Survival Outcomes

Adam Kittai, MD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, discusses his research on racial disparities in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) outcomes during the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

“Last year at ASCO, we presented data using the SEER database that looks at the entirety of the United States,” Dr. Kittai said. “In that data, we found that patients who were Black had a worse overall survival than White patients for CLL. The issue with that specific database is that it’s very difficult to ascertain what treatment patients received.”

In the study they presented during this year’s ASCO meeting, Dr. Kittai and colleagues used information from the Flatiron Health Database to conduct a real-world analysis of racial disparities in outcomes while accounting for the treatment received and disease-specific variables.

The retrospective analysis included patients who received treatment for CLL between 2002 and 2022.

In this video, Dr. Kittai discusses the study’s results, real-world implications, and what he sees as the next steps.