>"The researchers found that black women have a mortality rate of 10.1 per 100,000. For white women, the rate is 4.7 per 100,000. Past estimates had those rates at 5.7 and 3.2, respectively."
Let's check the numbers here.
5.7 per 100,000 is 10.1 per 177,000. The rate of cervical cancer among black women with intact cervices is given as 10.1 per 100,000, and the change in estimate is ascribed solely to changing the methodology to consider only women with cervices, so 77,000 of that 177,000 had hysterectomies, or 43%. The corresponding number for white women is 30%.
This number seems far too high. I can't find a reliable source for the US, but [0] says "up to a fifth of women have had their womb removed by the age of 55" in the UK. Is the rate of hysterectomies really 43% for black women, or is someone lying about the statistics?
At one point, it was so common for an African-American woman to get an involuntary hysterectomy that it got its own euphemism: The Mississippi Appendectomy [0]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8414322 is a study that shows a difference in the rate of hysterectomy, but not quite so dramatic of one as that. But it seems there's a lot of evidence that black women have hysterectomies at a higher rate than white women.
It's probably too simplistic to be the explanation, but I think they must have overlooked some huge effect rather than many smaller ones that mostly work in the same direction, so, at the risk of making a fool of myself: could it be that a large fraction of people with cervical cancer have their cervix removed but still die from cervical cancer because their cancer already has metastized? (That would imply that a significant fraction of those dying from cervical cancer don't have a cervix at the moment they die)
>"The researchers found that black women have a mortality rate of 10.1 per 100,000. For white women, the rate is 4.7 per 100,000. Past estimates had those rates at 5.7 and 3.2, respectively."
Mortality rate isn't really the chances of dying from the cancer though. It looks like a variation on the old frequencies vs probabilities confusion.
[+] [-] jph|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feld|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmurray|9 years ago|reply
Let's check the numbers here.
5.7 per 100,000 is 10.1 per 177,000. The rate of cervical cancer among black women with intact cervices is given as 10.1 per 100,000, and the change in estimate is ascribed solely to changing the methodology to consider only women with cervices, so 77,000 of that 177,000 had hysterectomies, or 43%. The corresponding number for white women is 30%.
This number seems far too high. I can't find a reliable source for the US, but [0] says "up to a fifth of women have had their womb removed by the age of 55" in the UK. Is the rate of hysterectomies really 43% for black women, or is someone lying about the statistics?
[0]https://www.womens-health-concern.org/help-and-advice/factsh...
[+] [-] coredog64|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://mississippiappendectomy.wordpress.com/about/ (That's the first result from big G, but you should be able to find more were you so inclined).
[+] [-] stormbrew|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmageggy|9 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/health/cervical-cancer-un...
[+] [-] choward|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xutopia|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nonbel|9 years ago|reply
Mortality rate isn't really the chances of dying from the cancer though. It looks like a variation on the old frequencies vs probabilities confusion.
[+] [-] nrdgrrrl|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]