FRIDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDayNews) -- Black men in Florida with oral and pharyngeal cancer don't live as long as white men with the same kind of cancer and are less likely to have surgery necessary for optimal treatment of the disease.

The finding is reported by University of Florida researchers, who examined diagnosis, treatment, and mortality data from 1988 to 1998 for 21,481 Floridians (2,150 black men and women and 19,331 white men and women) with oral and pharyngeal cancer.

The data revealed that the cancers among blacks were twice as likely to have spread by the time of diagnosis and that blacks were less likely to undergo surgery than whites. The median survival time for blacks was 360 days, compared with 649 days for whites.

"What we found is that African-American males in Florida died 44 percent earlier than did white males, and were also more likely to receive only radiation therapy and not surgery than were whites, Scott Tomar, an associate professor in the division of public health services and research at the College of Dentistry, said in a prepared statement.

The study appears in the August issue of Cancer Causes and Control.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about oral cancer.