surgery compared to white women.
“That’s all the more reason we should be trying to reduce disparities in care,” Schneyer adds.
Traditional abdominal surgery for fibroids is generally safe. But it causes more pain and blood loss, and has a longer recovery time than minimally invasive procedures.
For the new study — recently published in the Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology — Schneyer’s team examined records of more than 1,300 women who had surgery for uterine fibroids at Cedars-Sinai in recent years.
Most had a minimally invasive myomectomy or hysterectomy, but there were substantial racial gaps: Among white women, 81% underwent minimally invasive procedures, versus 57% of Black women and 65% of Hispanic women. Asian women, meanwhile, had a rate comparable to white women.
Schneyer says there are times when traditional surgery is the better option, depending on the number of fibroids or size of the uterus, for example.
But those factors did not explain the disparities in surgery type, the study found.
Instead, Black and Hispanic women were less likely than white women to see a doctor who specialized in