African American children are more likely to die after surgery than their white peers
Source: Washington Post,
African American children are more likely to die after surgery than their white peers, researchers find
African American children are three times more likely than their white peers to die after surgery despite arriving at hospitals without serious underlying conditions, the latest evidence of unequal outcomes in health care, according to a study published Monday.
The study, in the journal Pediatrics, comes in the middle of a pandemic that has had a disproportionate impact on African Americans and other people of color in the United States and abroad. Research has indicated that black coronavirus patients die at higher rates even when taking into account age, socioeconomic status and existing health concerns.
“We know that traditionally, African Americans have poorer health outcomes across every age strata you can look at,” said Olubukola Nafiu, the lead researcher and an anesthesiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “One of the explanations that’s usually given for that, among many, is that African American patients tend to have higher comorbidities. They tend to be sicker.”
But his research challenges that explanation, he said, by finding a racial disparity even among otherwise healthy children who came to hospitals for mostly elective surgeries.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/african-american-children-are-more-likely-to-die-after-surgery-than-their-white-peers-researchers-find/2020/07/18/fab97ab4-c83a-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_kid-surgery-710am-mts%
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