African American & Hispanic Women View Mammography Differently Than Caucasian Women

A mammography is an important screening tool to detect early stages of breast cancer. However, in a recent press release, researchers announced that not all ethnic groups have the same beliefs regarding mammograms.

Researchers at Boston University Medical Center recently announced the results of a study they had done concerning women's understanding of the importance of having a mammogram.

They found that African American and Hispanic women did not view getting a mammogram as importantly as Caucasian women view getting a mammogram. It is important to tackle this problem because both African American and Hispanic women have a higher death rate from breast cancer than Caucasian women.

"Limited understanding of mammography still exists across different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Increased community outreach and education targeted at minority and underserved women may lead to better breast cancer prognoses in these groups," said Nazia F. Jafri, M.D., who is a medical intern at Mount Auburn Hospital in Boston.

Mammograms are very useful to detect early stage cancers. There are also some instances where mammograms give a false-positive, that is, the mammogram detects something of concern, additional screenings are done, and the growth that was found is not cancer.

Researchers questioned over 1,000 participants in this study, asking if they would keep having regular mammograms if they had received a false-positive result. Only 48 percent of Hispanic women and 56 percent of African American women said they would. In contrast, 76 percent of Caucasian women would continue to have mammograms to detect early stages of breast cancer.

Caucasian women do have the highest incidence of breast cancer rates, and fewer minority women develop breast cancer. When the minority women develop breast cancer, their survival rate (also called their mortality rate) is much higher than for Caucasian women.

African American women who are between 35 to 44 years old have double the rate of death from breast cancer than Caucasian women according to statistics from the United States Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Using the same statistics, Hispanic women have a 20 percent chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer in a later stage than Caucasian women.

One of the primary contributing factors is because minority women do not get mammograms as often as Caucasians, so when breast cancer is detected, it's often at a more advanced stage.

Researchers are trying to determine what is causing the difference in mammography screenings. It could be economic, it could be related to their socioeconomic background or it could be related to ethnic beliefs.

Source:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/rson-atm112007.php