Is It A Fact That African American Men At Greater Risk From Prostate Cancer Than White Men?

Statistics show that African American men are at greater risk of dying from prostate cancer than white men and most statisticians are in agreement that the risk in the case of African Americans is roughly two and a half times that of white Americans. Howver, is this data misleading?

The answer may be found in a study carried out not long ago in North Carolina. The study involved some 253 white men and 84 African Americans between the ages of 40 and 75 who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2001 and 2004.

The study looked at several factors including, employment, income, family history, attitudes towards health care and health care providers, the existence of other medical conditions, screening history, treatment, access to care, symptoms and whether or not the men had health insurance.

The study found that 55 percent of the African Americans earned less than $40,000 annually in comparison to to 23 percent for the white men. The study also showed that African Americans were more likely to be educated to a lower standard, to have a blue-collar job, to have other accompanying medical conditions and to be unemployed as a result of disability or illness.

The study further showed that just 3 percent of white men did not have medical insurance, in comparison to 8 percent of African Americans and that just over 30 percent of white men has some type of supplemental Medicare coverage, in comparison to 17 percent of African Americans.

One particularly interesting finding from the study was the fact that both groups were equally well informed about the risks of prostrate cancer and the need for treatment, although the African Americans took greater responsibility for their own health and were not as likely to trust their doctors. In fact a number of the African Americans stated that they were wary of their doctors and felt that any advice given was more likely to be influenced by the cost of treatment than patient needs.

On the important question of screening, African Americans were less likely to have regular check-ups, digital rectal examinations or prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests. The study also reported that African Americans were more than twice as likely to have had to request a PSA test than white men.

It is clear from this study that there is a marked different between the two groups that lies in the lack of early detection in the case of African Americans and that this arises to a significant degree from the fact that they do not have established relationships with their doctors, have poor access to affordable and convenient care and do not hold adequate health insurance.

Clearly it is difficult to put numbers to a study of this nature and additional, and more extensive, studies should to be carried out to quantify the differenced between African Americans and white Americans. Nonetheless, it would seem that much of the difference does not stem from the fact that African Americans are more likely to develop prostate cancer but stems from the fact that they are more likely to die as a result of the disease because of its was detected late.

If the gap between the two groups in terms of the provision of healthcare were narrowed the figures could well look very different.

ProstateProblemCenter.com provides information on prostate cancer from understanding prostate cancer treatment to the therapeutic use of prostate massage

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