By: Diana Barnes-Brown for Fibroids1Two new studies have shown that one of the diseases most feared by women of all walks of life, breast cancer, is more likely to lead to death in black American women than in their white counterparts.
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Breast Cancer Treatment
Treatments for breast cancer can vary depending on the stage of the cancer, the overall health of the patient, and what doctors believe to be the best combination for the individual being treated, but typically include several of the following:
Surgery, to remove the cancerous tissue
Radiation therapy, to kill cancer cells or keep them from reproducing and growing
Chemotherapy or high-dose chemotherapy with anti-cancer drugs to kill cancer cells or keep them from reproducing or growing
Hormone therapy to stop cancer cell growth
Biological or immunotherapy, which uses the immune system to help fight cancer in the body.
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According to one study, black American women are 19 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white American women. Additionally, a different study found that minority women are only half as likely as white women to receive crucial post-surgical drug therapies for their breast cancer. The first study, conducted by researchers from the Breast Care Center at the University of Michigan, involved the review of 20 previous studies on breast cancer that included patient survival, ethnicity and socioeconomic status data.
“Even after controlling for socioeconomic status and disease stage, African-American women were… more likely to die from breast cancer than white women,” noted lead author Dr. Lisa A. Newman. These findings emphasize the need to look more closely at how “biologic, genetic, and sociocultural factors” affect breast cancer death rates among black women.
For the second study, researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine reviewed medical records of women who had had surgery for early-stage breast cancer. All women in the study had their surgery in 1999 and 2000, and a total of 677 women were included in the study.
The team discovered that women of minority ethnicities were only half as likely as white women to receive additional post-operative treatment, despite similar referral rates to oncologists. Thirty-four percent of black women were victims of under-used adjuvant treatments, while 23 percent of Hispanic women and only 16 percent of white women had suffered the same.
In a prepared statement, Dr. Nina A. Bickell, lead author and associate professor of health policy and medicine at Mount Sinai, noted that “significant progress can be made toward reducing racial disparities in cancer death by eliminating the disparities in breast cancer treatment.”
