EP 650 Do Minority Cancer Patients Receive Different Care Than White Patients?

The answer to the question posed in the title to this podcast was the basis of a substantial research project undertaken by a team at the Yale Cancer Center, led by Dr. Sajid Khan,an associate professor of surgery and section chief of hepato-pancreato-biliary and mixed tumors at Yale School of Medicine. He is our guest today. The findings are rather stunning. In a study encompassing over a half million patients over more than a decade and with a variety of gastrointestinal cancers, it was discovered that Black patients are less likely than white patients to have “negative surgical margins”, and have adequate lymph node removal in surgery. Following surgery Black patients are less likely to be offered chemotherapy or radiation. The looming question in my mind when I did this interview with Dr. Khan was ‘why.’ The answers may surprise you and beg more questions as you think about what the research tells us.

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