Black women are more likely to die from a breast cancer diagnosis than white women, as black women are more likely to have health issues, according The Los Angeles Times.
Statistics from a study published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn show of the black women on Medicare who were told they had breast cancer, 55.9 percent were alive five years later.
White women diagnosed in the same year, and were also the same age, lived in the same area and were diagnosed in the same year, were 68.8 percent more likely to be alive past five years.
"But the more that white women had in common with black women, the smaller the discrepancy became. When the researchers compared the black breast cancer patients with white patients who had similar demographic characteristics as well as similar tumors, the survival gap of 12.9 percentage points shrank to 4.4 points," the LA Times reports. "And when the researchers focused on white patients who had not only similar demographics and tumors but who also got similar breast cancer treatments, the gap narrowed further, to 3.6 percentage points."
The research teams reasoning for black women being less likely to survive cancer is because they were more likely to have other health conditions. In the study, 26 percent of the black patients had diabetes when diagnosed with breast cancer, while 15.3 percent of white women had diabetes.
"Most of the difference is explained by poorer health of black patients at diagnosis, with more advanced disease, worse biological features of the disease, and more comorbid conditions," researcher wrote in the study.
According to the LA Times, researchers also found treatment for black patients was not as good as what the white patients received; black women were less likely to get certain combinations of chemotherapy drugs and were suggested to undergo surgery with no therapy afterward, but researchers said they believe they did not have much affect on the study's outcome.
"By the time blacks [visit a doctor], they're so sick that treatment isn't changing the outcomes," said Dr. Jeffrey H. Silber, director for the Center for Outcomes Research at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and leader of the study. "The outcome is already fated to be poor when patients come in with such advanced disease."
To read the full LA Times story about the study, click here.
