Cervical Cancer Just Got Much Deadlier -- Because Scientists Fixed a Math Error (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cervical cancer is 77 percent more deadly for black women and 44 percent more deadly for white women than previously thought, researchers report today in the journal Cancer. But the lethal boosts aren't from more women actually dying than before -- they're from scientists correcting their own calculation error. In the past, their estimates didn't account for women who had undergone hysterectomies -- which almost always removes the cervix, and with it the risk of getting cervical cancer. We don't include men in our calculation because they are not at risk for cervical cancer and by the same measure, we shouldn't include women who don't have a cervix," Anne F. Rositch, the study's lead author and an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins told The New York Times. For the study, the researchers looked at national cervical cancer mortality data collected between 2000 to 2012. They also looked into national survey data on the prevalence of hysterectomies. Then, they used those figures to adjust the number of women at risk of dying of cervical cancer. 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. The new death rate for black women in the US is on par with that of developing countries. Though the new study wasn't designed to address racial disparities, experts speculate that the large difference reflects unequal access to preventative medicine and quality healthcare.

Comments

That's a lot of hysterectomies

[Solandri]

Article is paywalled so I can't read their actual data. If R is the rate at which women die of cervical cancer, n is the number of women who die of cervical cancer, N is the population of women, and h is the fraction who have had hysterectomies.

R_initial = n / N
R_adjusted = n / (N - h*N) = (n / N) * (1 / (1-h))
R_adjusted / R_initial = 1 / (1- h)
(1-h) = 1 / (R_adjusted / R_initial)
h = 1 - 1/(R_adjusted / R_initial)

For black women, R_adjusted / R_initial = 1.77, so

h = 1 - 1/1.77 = 0.435

43.5% of black women have had hysterectomies.

For white women, R_adjusted / R_initial = 1.44, so

h = 1 - 1/1.44 = 0.306

30.6% of white women have had hysterectomies.

According to this site over 1/3 of women over age 60 have had hysterectomies. Which seems to agree with the above calculated rates. I had no idea hysterectomies were that prevalent.

That's Not Deadlier. That's a Higher Incidence.

[tempo36]

Exactly what the Subject says. Cervical cancer did not get deadlier. That would be an adjustment to the 1, 3, or 5 year mortality rates which are not addressed here. What they adjusted was the incidence of the disease, i.e. the likelihood that you will get the disease.

Their data is valid presumable, but this headline about "deadlier" is wholly inaccurate. Report what the study actually concluded, not clickbait.

Re: Pretend this is slashdot

[fastest fascist]

Cervical cancer is virtually always (according to cancer.org) caused by an HPV infection. Effective prevention as part of healthcare is how you combat STDs like that, so yes, it seems reasonable to expect that poor healthcare will lead to increased cervical cancer rates.