Figures show that African American men are at greater risk of dying from prostate cancer than white men and the majority of statisticians agree that the risk in the case of black men is in the region of two and a half times that of white men. But, are these statistics misleading?

The answer to this question may come from a study carried out not long ago in North Carolina. The study looked at some 253 white men and 84 black men between the ages of 40 and 75 who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 2001 and 2004.

The study examined a number of factors including, treatment, family history, the existence of other medical conditions, attitudes towards health care and health care providers, employment, access to care, income, symptoms, screening history and whether the men had health insurance.

The study found that 55 percent of the black men earned less than $40,000 a year compared to 23 percent for white men. It also found that black men were more likely to be less well educated, to have blue-collar jobs, to have other accompanying medical problems and to be unemployed through illness or disability.

In addition the study found that only 3 percent of white men did not have medical insurance, compared to 8 percent of black men and that just over 30 percent of white men has some type of supplemental Medicare coverage, compared to 17 percent of black men.

One especially interesting finding was that both groups were equally well informed about the risks of prostrate cancer and the need for treatment, but that the black men accepted greater responsibility for their own health and were not as likely to trust their doctors. In fact many of the black men stated they were wary of their doctors and felt that the advice they were giving was more likely to be based on the cost of treatment than it was to be based upon patient needs.

On the important question of screening, black men were less inclined to have regular check-ups, digital rectal examinations or prostate specific antigen (PSA) tests. It was also interesting to note that the study reported that black men were far more likely to have to request a PSA test than white men.

It is clear from this study that there is a marked different between the two groups that lies in the lack of early detection in the case of black men and that this arises to a significant degree from the fact that they do not have sound relationships with their doctors, have poor access to convenient and affordable health care and do not have adequate health insurance.

Clearly it is not easy to put numbers to a study of this nature and additional, and bigger, studies should to be carried out to quantify the differenced between black men and white men. Nevertheless, it would seem that much of the difference does not lie in the fact that black men are more likely to develop prostate cancer but lies in the fact that they are more likely to die as a result of the disease because of its was detected late.

If the gap between the two groups as far as the provision of healthcare were narrowed then the statistics could well look very different. ProstateProblemCenter.com provides information on prostate cancer from understanding prostate cancer treatment to the therapeutic use of prostate massage