Black Women More Likely to Get Wrong Treatment for Breast Cancer Than White Women

A new study, which is said to be the largest yet to look at the disparities in breast cancer treatment in the U.S., indicates that black women are much more likely to get the wrong treatment for breast cancer than white women. The study also shows that black women are more likely to be diagnosed later and have bigger tumors.

Native American women also appear to be at greater risk of developing more aggressive cancer and they also tend to get poor care.

"We found that there is a consistent pattern of late diagnosis and not receiving recommended treatment for some racial and ethnic groups across all breast cancer subtypes," said Lu Chen of the at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who led the study.

Notably, researchers find, African-American and American Indian/Alaska Native women in particular are at higher for stage IV triple-negative breast cancer.

Black women had a 40% to 70% higher risk of having stage IV breast cancer than whites.

Native American women where four times as likely to have stage IV triple-negative cancer. And black and Hispanic women were 30% to 40% more likely than whites to receive the wrong treatment for their cancer type.

Advertisement

It's long been known that black women are far more likely to die of their breast cancer than white women. The National Cancer Institute reveals that 25 in every 100,000 white and 34 in every 100,000 black women die of breast cancer. Nearly 16 out 100,000 Hispanic and American Indian women die of breast cancer.

Advertisement

Source-Medindia