A University of Northern Iowa professor has found an alarming trend in the treatment of breast cancer. Health professor Sue Joslyn found elderly women and minority women were less likely to have the kind of follow-up radiation treatment after a lumpectomy that’s recommended. Joslyn says the National Institutes of Health recommends women who have a lumpectomy should receive radiation therapy as a follow-up. Joslyn found older women and black women were less likely to have the recommended follow-up radiation. Joslyn’s earlier study found women in rural areas were less likely to choose the less-radical lumpectomy proceedure. That earlier study covered the years 1983 to 1992. Her latest study has just been published in a medical journal. (The title of that journal: The International Journal of Radiation Oncology.)
