African American Women Less Likely to Receive Breast Reconstruction Following Masectomy

Statistics show that roughly 1 in 8 American women--or just about 12 percent--will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime.

However, Dartmouth researchers found that less than 55 percent of African American women are likely to receive breast reconstruction following a mastectomy regardless of where they received care for recovery. 

"We wanted to understand whether the racial disparity observed in breast reconstruction among women with breast cancer was related to where women received care, independent of race," said Tracy Onega, PhD, Associate Professor of Community & Family Medicine, Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, in a news release. "This study fills an important gap in addressing whether racial disparities in breast reconstruction are due - at least in part - to disproportionate use of hospitals with services available."

Findings revealed that African American women were less likely to receive breast reconstruction following mastectomy overall, and had lower likelihoods of breast reconstruction than any other race via observation from those attending hospitals than those in the following settings: rural (67 percent less likely than urban), non-teaching (25 percent less likely than teaching), not part of cooperative oncology groups (32 percent less likely than coops), and performed fewer breast cancer surgeries (between 24-31 percent less likely than the highest quartile of volume).

"The next step is to understand which factors contribute to the disparity," concluded Onega. "We want to understand whether these factors are economic (although all women studied were insured by Medicare), cultural, behavioral, etc. so that we can begin to develop targeted interventions for all women who would prefer to have reconstruction after mastectomy, to increase their quality of life and well-being."