Black and Hispanic cancer patients likely to receive less pain medications, Dana-Farber study says
BOSTON – A local hospital found that not all patients are treated the same in the final stages of cancer.
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that older Black and Hispanic patients with advanced cancer are less likely to receive opioid medications for pain relief in the last weeks of life compared to white patients, and when they did receive the pain medications, they tended to receive lower doses.
This was regardless of socioeconomic status. Black men experienced the greatest inequities with respect to both access to opioids and urine drug testing.
Doctors say everyone should agree that screening should be applied uniformly and cancer patients should have equal access to pain relief at the end of life.
