French scientists have found a drug they say tricks the body into burning off fat - and it even works on a high-fat diet. Reducing calorie consumption by about 20% has been shown to slow down the aging process, improve endurance and protect against diet-induced obesity and metabolic diseases such as diabetes. Last year researchers
Full Post: New drug tricks the body into burning off fat
Disparities in survival among black patients diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer are not seen when patients are recommended appropriate treatment, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Surgery.
Lung cancer causes more deaths in the United States than any other cancer, according to background information in the article. Pulmonary resection-or surgery to remove a portion of the lung-provides the best chance for patients with early-stage disease to be cured. “Black patients with early-stage lung cancer have lower five-year survival rates than white patients, and this difference in outcome has been attributed to lower rates of resection among black patients,” the authors write. “Several potential factors underlying racial differences in the receipt of surgical therapy include differences in pulmonary function, access to care, refusal of surgery, beliefs about tumor spread on air exposure at the time of operation and the possibility of cure without surgery, distrust of the health care system and physicians, suboptimal patterns of patient and physician communication and health care system and provider biases.” Of these, access to care is often considered the most important of factors underlying racial disparities.
Farhood Farjah, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues designed a study to address whether differences in survival persist when evaluating only patients who had been recommended to receive optimal therapy, in this case lung resection. Patients recommended for therapy were considered likely to have “cleared” at least one major hurdle of access to care. The investigators analyzed data from 17,739 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer between 1992 and 2002 (average age 75, 89 percent white and 6 percent black) and who were recommended to receive surgical therapy. They tracked whether or not the patients underwent surgery, and their overall survival, through 2005.
While black patients recommended to surgery had lung resections less frequently than white patients (69 percent vs. 83 percent, the authors write. After adjustment, there was no significant association between race and death.
Several possible explanations exist for the differences in rates of surgery, the authors note, and these may be important for understanding patient decision-making and improving care delivery systems. Black patients may be more likely to refuse surgery than white patients, or may have more limited access to recommended care.
“Although these findings do not refute the likely roles of health care system and provider biases and patient characteristics as important causal factors underlying health disparities, the findings do suggest that other factors (i.e., distrust, perceptions and beliefs about lung cancer and its treatment and limited access to subspecialty care) may have a more dominant role in causing disparities than previously recognized. The implication of these findings is that interventions designed to narrow gaps in health care should target structural aspects of care, providers and patients and communities at risk for lung cancer and suboptimal care.” The study findings suggest that referral of all patients with potentially curable lung cancer for consideration of lung resection may be a helpful tool in mitigating previously identified racial differences in survival.
http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Posts:
The initial evaluation and management of injured patients from minority ethnic groups nationwide appears to be similar to that of non-Hispanic white patients, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Surgery. “Ethnic disparities in our health care system have been well documented in treatment of several diseases, such as coronary artery
Full Post: Ethnic disparities in treatment of trauma patients
Following introduction of a new system in 2002 to determine the allocation of donated livers, black patients no longer are less likely to receive a liver transplant, but disparities for women remain, according to a study in the November 26 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Model for End-Stage Liver
Full Post: Improvement seen regarding racial disparities for liver transplantation, disparities for women remain
Minority children awaiting a donor heart for transplant have a higher death rate than white children, even after controlling for clinical risk factors, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008. In a study conducted by researchers in Boston, waitlist mortality was 14 percent for white children, 19 percent for black,
Full Post: Racial disparities found in access and use of organ transplantation in children listed for heart transplant
People from black and south Asian communities in the UK are not benefiting as much as white people from doctors’ interventions to reduce their blood pressure, according to a new study published today in the journal Annals of Family Medicine. The study looked at the treatment of over 8,800 people with high blood pressure, visiting
Full Post: Black and south Asian people benefiting less from interventions to reduce blood pressure
The proportion of white children with high hopes for their educational progress is much lower than for other ethnic groups in England. One of the key factors behind the difference is parents’ aspirations for their children. These are the findings of new research by Professor Simon Burgess and Dr Deborah Wilson of the Centre for Market
Full Post: White children have lower educational aspirations than most ethnic minorities --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
