Cancer patients’ race may affect well-being
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Emotional and social quality of life reports from cancer patients may be influenced by race and ethnicity, researchers report the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
“Specifically,” Dr. Deepa Rao told Reuters Health, “African-Americans with cancer reported poorer physical and social well-being, but better emotional well-being, than European-Americans.”
Rao, of Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues examined how race or ethnicity might influence the social and emotional well-being of cancer patients. Previous studies found poorer physical health among African-Americans compared with European-Americans.
The current study examined social and emotional quality of life aspects reported by 502 African-American and 396 European-American patients in their mid-fifties. The patients, about 66 percent female, had cancer of the breast, colon, head/neck, or lung, or AIDS-related malignancies.
The results of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy - General questionnaire indicated that African-American cancer patients had poorer physical well-being, but better emotional well-being than cancer patients of European lineage.
For example, African-Americans had worse responses to the question “I feel ill,” but less extreme responses to the questions “I worry that my condition will get worse,” and “I am content with the quality of my life right now.”
In analyses that take into account factors such as diagnosis, marital or insurance status, education, and the patients’ reports on their performance status, race was a significant predictor of physical, social, emotional, and functional well-being, the investigators report.
They suggest that further research should examine the socioeconomic factors associated with these differences and if these differences are common among vulnerable populations, such as people with poor health literacy or language barriers.
SOURCE: Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, November 2008.
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