Your Black Health: Blacks Less Likely to Get Best Lung Cancer Treatment

Black patients with lung cancer are less likely than white patients to receive recommended chemotherapy and surgery, a new study finds.

Disparities in lung cancer treatments were as large in 2002 as they were back in the early 1990s, even though there have been efforts to decrease those inequalities in treatment, the study said.

"This study shows what most of the previous research has shown -- that disparities in treatment patterns [still exist] between blacks and whites," said Katherine S. Virgo, director of health services research the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the study.

The findings were published online April 13 in the journalCancer.

For the study, Dale Hardy, of the University of Texas School of Public Health, and colleagues collected data on 83,101 people 65 and older with non-small cell lung cancer -- the most common form of lung cancer -- between 1991 and 2002.

 

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