Breast Cancer Death Rates 42% Higher for Black Women

By John Henry Dreyfuss, MDalert.com staff.

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  • Breast cancer death rates are 42% higher in black women than white women.
  • According to a recent study from the American Cancer Society, black and white women now have equal breast cancer incidences for the first time in record keeping.
  • Black women die younger and sooner after diagnosis with breast cancer.
  • Black women are often diagnosed with more aggressive cancers.
  • Data show disparity in healthcare access is not a significant cause of mortality disparity.
  • Ethnicity must influence clinical decision making.

The Good News

A systematic meta-analysis conducted by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, has found that, “Although white women have historically had higher incidence rates [of breast cancer] than black women, in 2012, the rates converged.”

Despite the relative increase in breast cancer rates among black women, the overall number of breast cancer deaths among U.S. women decreased significantly – by 36% – over the period from 1989 to 2012.

This “translates to 249,000 breast cancer deaths averted in the United States over this period. This decrease in death rates was evident in all racial/ethnic groups except American Indians/Alaska Natives, “the researchers explained.

The Bad News

The bad news has been persistent for quite a long time: Black women get more lethal forms of breast cancer than do women in other ethnic groups. And, despite earlier detection of breast cancers in black women, the mortality disparity between black and white women nationwide has continued to widen; and, by 2012, death rates were 42% higher in black women than in white women.

 

Figure. Her2 and Her3 distribution on a breast cell.

During 2003 through 2012, breast cancer death rates declined for white women in all 50 states; but, for black women, declines occurred in 27 of 30 states that had sufficient data to analyze trends. In 3 states (Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin), breast cancer death rates in black women were stable during 2003 through 2012. Widening racial disparities in breast cancer mortality are likely to continue, at least in the short term, in view of the increasing trends in breast cancer incidence rates in black women.

According to the vast database of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute demonstrate clearly that black women are diagnosed and die from the disease at younger ages than do white women.

According to the ACS, these findings suggest “that the disease may exact a greater economic and family toll on blacks by stealing more of a woman’s most productive years. The median age at diagnosis is 58 for black women and 62 for white women. The median age for breast cancer death is 62 for black women and 68 for white women.”

Another negative finding suggested that that “advances in diagnosis and treatment that have sharply improved survival rates and saved countless lives [in white women] have largely bypassed [black women]. By virtually every measure of the disease — age of diagnosis, age of death, stage of diagnosis — black women are at a significant disadvantage compared with white women, the data shows.”

These were the strong conclusions of the American Cancer Society researchers.

What You Can Do

Obesity is considered a risk factor for breast cancer. Obesity has been linked to an increased risk of estrogen-receptor positive breast cancers, the type of tumor responsible for much of the increase in breast cancers among black women. The obesity rate among black women was 58% during the 2009 to 2012 period, up from 39% from 1999 to 2002. Meanwhile, the obesity rate among white women has stabilized at around 33%.

  • Hold a breast cancer screening day: Shut down the clinic for all other activities. Invite male and female patients to come in for a breast cancer screening.
  • Be sure that you and your colleagues focus on breast cancer as a risk for black women.
  • Urge young black women to be fully screened for breast cancer, especially those who are overweight.
  • When you encounter a young black woman patient, bear in mind that she is at increased risk of the most serious type of a lethal disease.
  • In this case, your awareness of her ethnicity positively informs your clinical decision making.

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