What Notable Disparities Are Seen in Kidney Cancer Treatment?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Pavlos Msaouel
In this program:
What kidney cancer disparities are seen in treatment? Watch as Dr. Pavlos Msaouel shares population groups and lifestyle and environmental factors that show increased risk of kidney cancer and how to improve awareness to health researchers, clinicians, and others for increased kidney cancer research.
Transcript
Broderick Rodell:
So there are many factors that can negatively impact outcomes for families facing a kidney diagnosis, what are the notable health disparities consistently seen in treating patients living with kidney cancer?
Dr. Pavlos Msaouel:
So, one fact about kidney cancer, for example, is that it does disproportionately impact service members, military service members in the United States, for example, and their dependents and veterans. And how does it do that? Because as we mentioned before, kidney cancer, does occur twice more commonly in men, so that's number one. The other thing is that smoking, cigarettes smoking which is more common among veterans, is a very strong risk factor for kidney cancer, and then there are also other unique exposures that may increase the risk for kidney cancer, certain chemicals, etcetera. And this is one reason why, for example, that particular group is affected more commonly by kidney cancer that or it's a vulnerable group. At the same time, there is this kidney cancer called RMC that is a rare kidney cancer, but it is aggressive, and it predominantly afflicts individuals of African descent, I'm not aware of any other cancer that so specifically targets a specific ethnic group and a minority and as we mentioned before, it does that because the sickle cell trait is so much more amongst individuals of Africans, so mainly in the U.S., that's African Americans. We have three million individuals in this country that have the sickle cell trait, and in large part, there is a disparity there because this is a young population as well, so the average age is 28 years old, and so it's a very vulnerable population.
And because of that, there are disparities making, for example, this kidney cancer invisible to scientist to health researchers, clinicians, etcetera, and even in the communities, and there are efforts that are happening right now to change this, to make this kidney cancer visible.
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