Originally published February 16 2006
New study supports previous studies that point to racial gaps in health care
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Journal of Clinical Oncology has published a report by Christopher Lathan, MD, of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which reveals that black patients were less likely to receive lifesaving lung surgery than whites.
Many older blacks with lung cancer don't get the same treatment as whites, even when they have equal access to specialized care.
The finding comes from experts at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The report by Christopher Lathan, MD, and colleagues appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Lung cancer is the No. 1 cause of cancer deaths.
Lung cancer is a burden for all races, but it's most common and deadliest among black men, the researchers note.
They aren't the first to note racial gaps in health care.
Black patients had potentially lifesaving surgery for lung cancer far less often than whites.
The issue is complex, but better communication between doctors and patients might help, the researchers suggest.
The patients were older than 65 and only got their health care through Medicare.
They had been diagnosed in the 1990s with the most common type of lung cancer (nonsmall cell lung cancer).
Black patients differed from whites in these important ways: # They were 25 percent less likely to get invasive tests to check the stage of their lung cancer.
# Surgery was less often recommended to medically eligible blacks.
The results didn't match the researchers' expectations.
"We thought that if all the patients had been staged --- which suggests that they had access to the appropriate specialists and implies some level of trust in the medical system --- that they would have the same rate of surgery," Lathan says in a news release.
Mistrust of the medical system might be a possibility, the researchers note.
The findings should be confirmed and might not apply to younger patients, write Lathan and colleagues.
They call for greater emphasis on the doctor-patient relationship.
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