A new study conducted by the U of Michigan on Detroit area women showed black women with breast cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes were less likely to get treatment beyond surgery than white women.
Those of us working on the front lines w/ breast cancer patients have known this a long time. Black women aren't always given the same recommendations for treatment after surgery and those who are uninsured or on Medicaid or Medicare who do receive chemotherapy aren't given quality treatment to prevent side effects. Instead they receive less expensive and less effective drugs that leave them very sick. They're also less likely than white women to take hormonal agents like Tamoxifen that prevent recurrence.
The irony of all this is that black women are more likely to be diagnosed with more aggressive forms of breast cancer that do respond well to chemotherapy.
Black women are less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, yet 5 year survival rates for white women are 90%, but for black women survival is 77%.
http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20071008/blacks-breast-cancer-treatment-lacking"We have seen that African-American women are not getting the optimal therapy as often as white Americans," says researcher Mousumi Banerjee, PhD, of the University of Michigan, in a news release. “Some of it has to do with socioeconomics, some with insurance status and/or access to care, but there are choice issues as well, especially with chemotherapy."
...
Among those whose breast cancer had not spread to surrounding tissues, the results showed no significant differences in treatment received, such as the number of white and African-American women who received breast conservation surgery vs. mastectomy.
But among women whose cancer had spread to the lymph nodes or surrounding tissue, white women were more than four times more likely to receive the widely used breast cancer drug tamoxifen than African-American women. In addition, African-American women were three times less likely to receive chemotherapy as a supplemental breast cancer treatment.
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