Cervical cancer death rates are higher than previously thought

FILE - A child health nurse holds up a vial and box for the HPV vaccine, brand name Gardasil, a vaccine against a cervical cancer virus, at a clinic in Kinston, N.C., on Monday March 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Daily Free Press, Charles Buchanan)

The risk of dying from cervical cancer may be much higher than experts previously believed – particularly among older and black women, according to a new study.

Black women in the US are dying from the disease at a rate 77 percent higher and white women at a rate 47 percent higher, according to the study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Previous estimates didn’t account for women whose cervixes were removed in hysterectomies, which eliminate the risk of developing the cancer, according to the study published Monday in the journal Cancer.

“Prior calculations did not account for hysterectomy because the same general method is used across all cancer statistics,” said Anne Rositch, assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the study.

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