Prostate cancer screening practices of African-American and non-African-American US primary care physicians: a cross-sectional survey

• Published in: International journal of general medicine 2012-01, Vol.5 (default), p.775-780
• Main Authors: Richards, Thomas B, Rim, Sun Hee, Hall, Ingrid J, Richardson, Lisa C, Ross, Louie E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African Americans; Cancer; Cross-sectional studies; Diagnosis; Medical screening; Original Research; Physicians; Practice; Primary care; Prostate cancer; Surveys
• ISSN: 1178-7074; 1178-7074
• DOI: 10.2147/IJGM.S36028

We explored whether African-American (AA) primary care physicians (PCPs) have different prostate cancer screening practices compared to non-AA PCPs, after adjustment for potential confounding factors such as the proportion of AA patients in PCP practices. We used SAS/SUDAAN to compare weighted responses from AA PCPs (n = 604) with those from non-AA PCPs (n = 647) in the 2007-2008 National Survey of Primary Care Physician Practices Regarding Prostate Cancer Screening. We used multivariate logistic regression to calculate the weighted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). We found that AA PCPs had higher odds of working in practices with above-the-median (≥ 21%) proportions of AA male patients (OR, 9.02; 95% CI: 5.85-13.91). A higher proportion of AA PCPs (53.5%; 95% CI: 49.5-57.4) reported an above-the-median proportion (≥ 91%) of PSA testing during health maintenance exams as compared to non-AA PCPs (39.4%; 95% CI: 35.5-43.4; P < 0.0002). After adjusting for the proportion of AA patients and other factors, we found that AA PCPs had higher odds of using PSA tests to screen men (OR, 1.74; 95% CI: 1.11-2.73). This study quantifies the magnitude of the differences reported in previous focus group studies. Our results may be helpful in hypothesis generation and in planning future research studies.