January 23, 2007
Disparity in Breast Cancer Treatment
The National Cancer Institute has an informative fact sheet of health disparities. One example of a disparity is African-Americans have a higher cancer mortality rate than other groups.
NYTimes.com is reporting on a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology that argues education, geographic region, socio-economic status, and BMI were all "...significantly associated with receipt of intentionally reduced doses of chemotherapy."
The authors offer up this possible explanation, "...physicians may have anticipated a failure to understand and stick with what is often a long and unpleasant treatment, so they pre-emptively reduced the dose in hopes of encouraging compliance."
Posted by Staff at 10:21 AM
Category: Breast Cancer; Health Disparities; Triple Negative Breast Cancer