消除对早产癌症死亡的社会经济和种族差异的影响
2011-09-18 19:45:45   来源：37度医学网   作者：  评论：0 点击：

Figure 8 shows the numbers of potential premature cancer deaths that could have been avoided in 2007 among adults aged 25 to 64 years in the absence of socioeconomic and/or racial disparities. If everyone in the United States experienced the same overall cancer death rates as the most educated non-Hispanic whites, 37% (60,370 of 164,190) of the premature cancer deaths could potentially have been avoided. This analysis suggests that eliminating socioeconomic disparities in African Americans could potentially avert twice as many premature cancer deaths as eliminating racial disparities, underscoring the dominant role of poverty in cancer disparities.

Compared with whites, African American men and women have poorer survival once cancer is diagnosed. The 5-year relative survival is lower in African Americans than in whites for every stage of diagnosis for nearly every cancer site (Fig. 9 ). These disparities may result from inequalities in access to and receipt of quality health care and/or from differences in comorbidities. As shown in Figure 10 , African Americans are less likely than whites to be diagnosed with cancer at a localized stage, when the disease may be more easily and successfully treated. The extent to which factors other than stage at diagnosis contribute to the overall survival differential is unclear. 25 However, some studies suggest that African Americans who receive cancer treatment and medical care similar to that of whites experience similar outcomes. 26

There have been notable improvements since 1975 in the relative 5-year survival rates for many cancer sites and for all cancers combined for both whites and African Americans (Table 12 ). The improvement in survival reflects a combination of earlier diagnosis and improved treatments. Cancers for which survival has shown the least improvement over the past 30 years include lung and pancreas.