Black Patients Are Less Likely To Receive Lung Cancer Surgery

Black Patients Are Less Likely To Receive Lung Cancer Surgery

A new study found that African Americans in Georgia who lived racially segregated communities were much less likely to receive potentially life-saving lung cancer surgery than people who lived in areas that were the least segregated by race according to CNBC reports:

The study found that black patients who lived in the most segregated neighborhoods were 65 percent less likely to receive non–small cell lung cancer surgery than people in the least segregated areas.

Blacks in the second-most segregated neighborhoods were 63 percent less likely to get that surgery, according to the study, published in Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

NSCLC is the most common form of lung cancer by far, and can sometimes be cured if diagnosed in the early stage, and if a patient undergoes surgery. At least half of patients who undergo surgery for NSCLC survive more than five years, but most patients who don’t get the surgery died within a year, the study noted.

The same research also found that the likelihood of whites getting the cancer surgery was not affected by whether they lived in an area that was largely black, but it was significantly affected by the general level of education in the neighborhood.

Discuss.