Cancer Treatment Depends On Patient’s Race

Boston (dbTechno) - A new study released and published in the journal of Cancer has shown that whites more often receive cancer treatment compared to blacks and other races.

The study was published by the American Cancer Society and was led by Dr. Cary Gross at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven.

Dr. Gross and colleagues found that there are a great deal of differences between treatment depending on race starting in the early 1990s and still today.

Researchers look at over 143,000 Americans, 65 and older. They were all diagnosed with lung, breast, colon, rectal, or prostate cancer between 1992 and 2002.

They were also all under the Medicare government health insurance program.

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society stated that the problem of cancer treatment disparities has been an issue in the United States “for a long, long time.”

He stated “I think individual racism likely accounts for a small amount of it, but not a large amount. What I would refer to as institutional or societal racism accounts for a much larger component of it.”

Those who had early stage lung cancer, whites were 19% more likely to be treated for the surgical removal of the tumor compared to blacks.

For rectal cancer, whites were 27% more likely to get advanced chemotherapy after treatment than blacks. The same went for colon cancer as well as whites were 24%more likely in that regard than blacks to get chemotherapy.

White men with prostate cancer were 11% more likely to get surgical or radiation treatment than blacks.

The study did not say how much these disparities would impact mortality rates and survival rates.