Is It The Case That African American Men At Higher Risk From Getting Prostate Cancer Than White Men?
Figures show that black men are more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men and the majority of statisticians agree that the risk in the case of black men is around about two and a half times that of white Americans. But, are these figures misleading?
The answer may be found in a study conducted not long ago in North Carolina. The study looked at some 253 white men and 84 black men between the ages of 40 and 75 who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2001 and 2004.
The study looked at several factors including attitudes towards health care and health care providers, family history, the existence of other medical conditions, symptoms, access to care, treatment, screening history, income, employment and whether or not the men had health insurance.
The study found that 55 percent of the black men earned less than $40,000 a year compared to 23 percent for the white men. It also showed that black men were more likely to be less well educated, to have blue-collar jobs, to have other accompanying medical problems and to be unemployed through illness or disability.
The study further showed that just 3 percent of white men had no medical insurance at all, in comparison to 8 percent of black men and that just over 30 percent of white men has some form of supplemental Medicare coverage, in comparison to 17 percent of black men.
One especially interesting finding was the fact that both groups were well informed about both the risks of prostrate cancer and the need for treatment, but that the black men took greater responsibility for their own health and were less likely to trust their doctors. Indeed many of the black men stated they were wary of their doctors and considered that any advice given was more likely to be based on the cost of treatment than patient needs.
On the important question of screening, black men were less inclined to have regular check-ups, digital rectal examinations or prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests. The study also reported that black men were more than twice as likely to have to request a PSA test than white men.
It is clear from this study that there is a marked different between the two groups that lies in the lack of early detection in black men and that this arises to a significant degree from the fact that they do not have sound relationships with their doctors, have poor access to affordable and convenient care and do not have adequate health insurance.
Quite clearly it is not easy to put numbers to a study of this nature and further, and bigger, studies need to be conducted to quantify the differences between black men and white Americans. Nonetheless, it seems that much of the difference does not stem from the fact that black men are more likely to develop prostate cancer but lies in the fact that they are more likely to die as a result of the disease because of its late detection.
If the gap between black men and white men as far as the provision of healthcare were closed the statistics might well look quite different.
