June 2, 2023 – Lung problems in black individuals are often underdiagnosed or neglected entirely because centuries-old racist medical beliefs have been programmed into the medical software used today, a brand new study shows.
The findings suggest that blacks often didn’t receive the identical treatment as whites for health problems reminiscent of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cystic fibrosis.
Healthcare professionals use computer software to interpret the outcomes of a standard lung test called a pulmonary function test. The test measures how well someone is respiration, for instance, how much air someone blows right into a device called a spirometer.
Published this week within the magazine JAMA network opened, The study compared the software currently in use with a race-neutral version. The researchers examined the test results of 8,431 people – 2,722 black people and 5,709 white people.
Researchers estimated that a race-neutral algorithm could diagnose lung problems in a further 1 million black people. Specifically, the researchers found that the race-neutral test found the next in black people:
- 10% more people suffer from lung problems
- An increase in problems amongst 20% more people
- A style of lung problem called restrictive impairment occurs in 40% more people
The medical racism that caused the flawed algorithm goes back centuries, wrote Lundy Braun, PhD, and Ricky Grisson, MD, MPH, MBA, in a comment published the study. Both are at Brown University. Braun is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and of African studies, and Grisson is an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine.
While other areas of drugs have already been investigated into the influence of medical racism on diagnostic algorithms, pulmonology has “surprisingly” lagged behind, they wrote. Medical racism has continued in diagnostic algorithms “in part because the deeply ingrained belief that black lungs are different from white lungs has obscured the harms of racial discrimination.[-based]“Adjustments in pulmonary function tests,” wrote Braun and Grisson.
“We need to construct on this essential work to seek out higher ways to each more accurately measure the consequences of racism on lung function and to more thoroughly investigate the biological processes by which racism damages the lungs of individuals of other racial and ethnic groups all over the world,” they concluded.