MONDAY, Dec. 12, 2022 (HealthDay News) — If someone is stricken with a blood cancer or life-threatening clot, they’ll probably fare better if they are white and wealthy, three new studies show.
So, enrollment in clinical trials can be crucial for some patients. The Mayo study examined data on enrollment in ...
...DLBCL trials from eight large academic medical centers across America. It found that 76% of enrollees were white.
Results from lab tests were key to getting accepted into the trials, but Black or Hispanic Americans were much less likely to meet those lab-based criteria than were whites, the research showed.
“These exclusion criteria are not impacting everyone equally – they’re impacting minorities more than white non-Hispanic patients,” Maurer said in an ASH news release.
Another study looked at stem cell transplants that in many cases can cure a blood cancer. These transplants leave patients more vulnerable to dangerous immune reactions and require more intense follow-up care.
The likelihood of a more complex stem cell transplant being needed rose even higher if the minority patient also came from a low-income household, the investigators found.
“Our transplant program is very committed to extending transplant access to minority populations, but our study highlights that many of these patients ...
...are both receiving the most complex transplants and facing significant socioeconomic challenges,” Fingrut said in the ASH news release.
“Our findings show that addressing financial hardship will be critical to extend transplant access, especially to patients from minority groups.”
In a third study, researchers found that race and income seemed to matter when U.S. patients were hit by potentially life-threatening clots in the lungs known as pulmonary embolisms.
Non-white and poorer patients were “significantly less likely to receive the most advanced therapies and more likely to die after suffering a pulmonary embolism,” the ASH news release noted.
Over 66,000 had the most severe, life-threatening form of pulmonary embolism.
Compared to white patients, Asian patients were 24% less likely to receive advanced therapies when hit by a severe form of pulmonary embolism, ...
...and they were 50% more likely to die, reported a team led by Dr. Mary Cushman, of the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont.
“Many people die of pulmonary embolism every year,” Cushman noted in the ASH news release.
“It’s preventable and it’s certainly treatable. We need to think about what we can do in hospitals to make sure that care is equitable.”
“I hope that clinicians will think about these findings in terms of how they take care of patients every day, and try their best to recognize their unconscious biases,” she added.
“Clinicians need to look at the patient in front of them and remember that regardless of their social class or the color of their skin, they should be treated the same as everybody else.”
Experts note that studies presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. SOURCE: American Society of Hematology, news release, Dec. 10, 2022