A new study led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers that looks at newly diagnosed lung cancer patients and follows them from diagnosis forward is one of the first to give reasons why patients don’t go on to get lung surgery and why surgery happens less often in blacks.
A new study led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers that looks at newly diagnosed lung cancer patients and follows them from diagnosis forward is one of the first to give reasons why patients don’t go on to get lung surgery and why surgery happens less often in blacks.
“Our most profound finding was the fact that African Americans with two or more additional medical conditions had almost zero surgeries, only about four out of 100, whereas white patients in the same situation had surgery just as often as if they didn’t have these conditions,” said Samuel Cykert, MD, lead author of the American Cancer Society-funded study, which is published in the June 16, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. For full release