United States: A new report finds that Black Americans are nearly a third more likely to die from colon cancer than white Americans. Improving cancer screening, including quality colonoscopies and proper follow-up, could help close this gap.
Importance of Quality Care
“It’s not enough to just get everyone screened; the quality of care during screening and follow-up must also be similar for Black and white adults,” said study lead author Oguzhan Alagoz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Findings Published
These particular findings were published in July 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
As Alagoz’ team noted that as compared to whites Black Americans are still 23 percent more prone to receiving a colon cancer diagnosis and about 31% more likely to die from the disease.
Some of this disparities had been blamed on the lower rates of the recommended colon cancer screening among the Black patients versus the white and however over the period of past two decades that gap has been closed.
Closing the Screening Gap
Like in 2005 one study that has found that 52 percent of the white Americans said they were up to date on their colon cancer screenings as compared to just 39 percent of the black people.
As reported by HealthDay, by the year 2019 this specific disparity had vanished and more than half of the black people and near about 69 percent of the white people said they’d been keeping up with their screenings ,the data showed.
So, why are the black Americans still dying of colon cancer at the higher rates?
As the Winconsin team noted that it’s one thing to get screened and the another to get proper and timely follow-up for example like Colonoscopies and biopsies if your colon cancer screen comes back positive.
According to the health experts Black patients do have the major lower rates of follow-up than whites and the colonoscopy services Black patients receive tend to be of a lower quality as well.
If those disparities were eliminated?
Using sophisticated mathematical modelling, Alagoz and the colleagues calculated that if the gap in proper follow-up was eliminated that could cut the race gap for the colon cancer incidence by 5.2% and for the colon cancer deaths by 9.3%.
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