Study Reveals Factors Responsible for Early Death Among Black Breast Cancer Patients

It is known that black women with breast cancer die earlier than white women. However, a new study reveals factors including delay in diagnosis and treatment along with other complications that lead to early deaths among black cancer patients.

The data for the study came from Medicare database for women who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 1991 and 2005. Researchers compared the survival rates of 7,375 black women with that of 3 sets of 7,375 matched white control patients.

One of the three sets of controls matched the demographics of the study patients (age, year and geographical location), the second set matched the time of diagnosis and extent of the cancer while the third matched the breast cancer treatment such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, reports HealthDay.

Researchers found that about 69 percent of white patients lived after five years while just 56 percent of black patients survived.

The study results also showed that 12.6 percent black women received no treatment when compared to about 6 percent white women. Black women were also less likely to have an earlier diagnosis and have a delay in treatment, all of which could contribute to their early death post cancer diagnosis.

"Our results suggest that it may be difficult to eliminate the racial disparity in survival from diagnosis unless differences in presentation can be reduced. There is also a disparity in treatment, with blacks receiving treatment inferior to that received by whites with similar presentation, but this explains only a small part of the observed difference in survival. The disparity in treatment might matter more if the disparity in presentation were reduced, because blacks would then be diagnosed with less advanced disease, for which treatment is more effective," researchers wrote.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers diagnosed in women in the U.S. Despite its high prevalence, researchers aren't sure why normal breast cells turn cancerous. According to most experts, breast cancer is caused by a combination of genetic, hormonal and environmental factors.

According to estimates by the National Cancer Institute, 232,340 new cases of female breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2013 in the U.S and nearly 40,000 women will die due to breast cancer.