Race matters in heart care

Blacks are far less likely than whites to get specialized procedures after a heart attack and are more likely to die within a year, according to a study showing persistent racial disparities in U.S. medical care.

The study, published in the June 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., tracked 1.2 million Medicare patients at least 68 years old who were treated for a heart attack between January 2000 and June 2005 at 4,627 U.S. hospitals. It found large differences in the way heart attacks are treated in black patients compared with white patients.

Blacks were about 30% less likely to get procedures to open blood vessels such as angioplasty or open-heart surgery after a heart attack, whether or not the hospital they checked into provided full invasive cardiac services, the study found.

They were also 22% less likely to be transferred from a hospital that did not do such procedures to one that did, it found. And when they were, blacks were 23% less likely to get these operations than whites.

In the first month after a heart attack, blacks were 9% less likely to die than whites, the researchers said, perhaps because whites were more likely to undergo specialized procedures that sometimes can be fatal. But in the period from a month to a year after the heart attack, blacks were up to 26% more likely to die than whites.