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Health - Reuters

Breast Cancer Treatment Delayed in Blacks
Tue Mar 9, 4:34 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - African American women are more likely than
white women to experience delays in the diagnosis and treatment of
breast cancer, new research indicates. Moreover, these racial
differences remained even after accounting for poverty status and
factors that affect access to care.

Numerous reports have shown that African American women with breast
cancer fare worse than their white counterparts. The current findings
suggest that the speed with which breast cancer is detected and treated
may explain the racial gap in outcomes.

In the new study, Dr. Karin Gwyn, from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
in Houston, and colleagues analyzed data from 251 African American women
and 580 white women with invasive breast cancer to assess racial
differences in diagnostic and treatment delays. The findings are
reported in the medical journal Cancer.

Overall, for more than 75 percent of the women the time from first
seeing a doctor to starting treatment was less than 3 months. However,
African American women were 73 percent more likely than whites to have a
longer delay. Adjusting for access to care factors, such as method of
detection and insurance status, and mammography history, reduced but did
not eliminate this elevated risk.

Compared with white women, African American women were 61 percent more
likely to experience a diagnostic delay of greater than 2 months and
twice as likely to experience a treatment delay of at least 1 month.

"Potentially clinically significant differences in terms of delayed
diagnosis and treatment exist between African American women and white
women," the authors note. "Improvements in access to care and in
socioeconomic circumstances may address these differences to some
degree, but additional research is needed to identify other contributing
factors," they add.

SOURCE: Cancer, March 8th online issue, 2004.









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