Cancer Incidence Among Texas Publicly Funded Substance Abuse Treatment Clients - 10/08/2018
In this study, the authors examine the incidence of cancer among a large cohort of patients receiving Texas Department of State Health Services publicly funded substance abuse treatment services between 2005 and 2009. We hypothesized that substance abuse patients would have an increased incidence of cancer, especially cancers associated with alcohol misuse, tobacco use, and opiate dependence. We compared cancer incidence among 119,237 substance abuse patients with those in the Texas general population as reported to the Texas Cancer Registry. The cohort was 60% male; and 50% white, 30% Hispanic, and 20% black. Mean age at the start of follow-up was 47.6 years (SD, 10.5 years), with mean follow-up time of 2.4 years (SD, 1.5 years). Primary drug dependency was 30% alcohol; 25% cocaine; 15% opiate; 13% amphetamine or methamphetamine; and 17% marijuana or other drugs. Almost 75% of the patients used tobacco regularly. The overall age-adjusted incidence rate was lower for substance abusers ...