Raczynski JM, Taylor H, Cutter G, Hardin M, Rappaport N, Oberman A.
Diagnoses, symptoms, and attribution of symptoms among black and white inpatients admitted for coronary heart disease.
Am J Public Health 1994;84(6):951-6.

This study examining racial differences in patients’ perceptions of their cardiac disease was conducted on 1,140 white and 347 black patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease, ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, or chest pain. Several important findings were reported. The authors found that “half of the White men and women in [the] overall patient sample had attributed their symptoms to cardiac origins, whereas fewer than one third of Black men and slightly more than one third of Black women had thought that their symptoms were related to their hearts.” Furthermore, “for blacks, the odds of reporting painful symptoms were only 64% of the odds found for Whites when other factors were controlled, and the odds of attributing symptoms to cardiac origins were almost 50% lower for Blacks than for Whites.”

The investigators suggest that “these differences in attribution may influence the care-seeking behavior of patients, which in turn, may influence medical decision making that is associated with patients’ perceptions of their symptoms.”