Mortality Increased for Racial/Ethnic Minorities With TBI

For patients with traumatic brain injury, racial and ethnic minorities have an increased risk for mortality, according to a study published online June 2 in Frontiers in Surgery.

Emma A. Richie, from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and colleagues compared outcomes for racial- and ethnic-minority patients suffering from traumatic brain injury. Outcomes were reviewed for patients enrolled in the Trauma One Database at the Oregon Health & Science University Hospital from 2006 to October 2017; data were included for 1,504 patients in the racial- and ethnic-minority cohort and 4,848 in the nonminority cohort. A total of 1,500 propensity score-matched pairs were included.

The researchers found that using injury type, probability of survival, and operative status as covariates, the adjusted hazard ratio for in-hospital mortality was 2.21 for minority patients.

"Although these are novel findings for the field of neurosurgical trauma related to traumatic brain injury, they are repeated in other specialties and other medically complex patient populations in the American health care system," the authors write. "These disparities permeate our society and contribute to inequitable health outcomes, and we must take action to identify the factors which perpetuate this disproportionate suffering."