A study recently published in Spine examined the complications and mortality rate for cervical spine surgery patients and compared the rates between different racial groups.
Study authors examined the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and found 983,420 adult nontrauma hospital discharges for cervical spine surgery from 2000 to 2009. The primary variable analyzed was race with covariates being age, sex, household income, insurance status, geographic location, hospital volume and comorbidities.
The researchers found:
1. Overall in-hospital complication was 4.09 percent. There were no differences in in-hospital complications between Hispanics and Caucasians.
2. Overall mortality was 0.42 percent. There were no differences in in-hospital mortality between Hispanics and Caucasians.
3. African Americans had higher odds for in-hospital complications with an odds ratio of 1.37 even after adjusting for known risk factors for complication and mortality.
4. African Americans also had higher risk of dying during hospitalization with an odds ratio of 1.59 even after adjusting for known risk factors for complications and mortality.
5. Similar outcomes were true for patients who underwent lumbar spine surgery with several racial disparities at the national level, according to a study previously published in Spine. African American patients were more likely to experience postoperative complications of any kind and had longer hospital length of stay.
Complications and longer hospital stays lead to higher cost of care. In the study on lumbar spine surgery differences, African American patients had around $24,267 average hospital-related costs while Caucasian patients had around $16,148. But, despite the additional complications for the African American population, they were prescribed significantly fewer medications in the two years after surgery than Caucasians, which had an impact on medication costs.
Studies presented at the 2011 North American Spine Society annual meeting also examined these differences for patients with spinal cord injury who underwent decompressions with and without fusions. They found minorities were significantly less likely to receive early intervention and African Americans had a significantly higher mortality rate than Caucasians.