CINCINNATI — Breast Cancer Awareness Month might be over, but one UC Health physician wants women to continue the conversation.
“Talk to women in line and say ‘hey, did you get the screening mammogram?’ I know it can be an awkward conversation to start, but I think we all need to do our due diligence and look out for each other," Dr. Rifat Wahab said.
Wahab is the attending breast radiologist, associate professor of radiology and the breast imaging fellowship director at UC Health.
She has seen hundreds of patients and has seen a disparity when it comes to diagnosing breast cancer.
“We do see a disparity between our minority women and our Caucasian women,” Wahab said.
She adds several factors fall into that disparity such as genetics, access to care, a high quality screening mammogram and education. She noted there are also other global disparities in screening.
“The USPS task forces states women should start screening at the age of 50 well our Hispanic women our African American women, our Asian women their peak incidents of cancer are younger than that up to 35% of minority women are diagnosed with breast cancer prior to the age of 50,” she said.
Wahab added this screening guideline essentially excludes women from getting an early diagnosis. She said a women’s first mammogram should be at the age of 40, but adds women should start having conversations with their doctor regarding risk factors for breast cancer.
According to a 2018 study by the Journal of American Medical Association, a higher proportion of minority women with breast cancer were diagnosed younger than 50 compared to white women. It’s 31% among Black Women, 34.9% among Hispanic women, 32.9% among Asian women and 23.6% among white women.
Wahab said a majority of breast cancer cases are diagnosed early because they have a a better understanding of diagnosing it.
“Unfortunately our minority women when they do present, have a more advanced presentation than our Caucasian women overall,” Wahab said. “If you do have an abnormality that is found on your mammogram a study has shown that our African American women, our Hispanic and Latino women will have a delay in coming back for that return appointment greater than our Caucasian women are.”
She noted having community ambassadors who are representative of their community is vital to getting more women to get their mammogram screening. Wahab added education is also important and the information that is presented is easy to read and in different languages.
Wahab said UC Health’s mobile mammography unit is helping to increase access to high quality screenings in the Greater Cincinnati area.
When it comes to research, Wahab said researchers are looking for more minority women to participate in studies.
“Once we start having more research on our minority women we can better understand what treatments work better for them, what types of breast cancers they are being diagnosed with, what type of screening tools would work best for them to identify those breast cancers at an early age,” she said.
Wahab said they can learn how to better treat minority patients who have breast cancer through research.
“So, through research we have found that our minority women are more often diagnosed with a triple negative breast cancer, and that type of breast cancer really limits the types of treatments we can use that’s currently available and those types of cancers have higher incidence of recurrence and metastasis,” Wahab said.
She said women of color have a lower five-year survival rate than Caucasian women.
Click here, for more information about getting a mammogram at UC Health.
