Women with inflammatory breast cancer — a rare, highly aggressive form of the disease — are living about twice as long after diagnosis than their counterparts in the mid-to-late 1970s.
But white patients today still tend to live about two years longer than their Black peers, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.
The incidence of inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) among Black women is also more than 70% higher than in white women, affecting 4.5 Black women out of 100,000 compared to 2.6 white women.
“Our findings make it clear that more research is needed to understand factors behind these racial disparities,” says resercher Hannah Abraham. “These factors might include awareness about the signs and symptoms of IBC among Black patients, biological and genetic differences, delays in diagnosis and treatment, the standard of care patients receive, including follow-up and survivorship care, and environmental factors.”
- See “Women with Inflammatory Breast Cancer Are Living Longer, But the Gap Between White and Black Patients Persists” on the University of Michigan Health Lab website ( October 12, 2020)
- See abstract of scientific paper: “Incidence and survival of inflammatory breast cancer between 1973 and 2015 in the SEER database” by Hannah Grace Abraham et al.
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