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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Surviving a trauma may depend upon your race and health insurance.
African-American and Hispanic patients are more likely to die after a trauma than white patients and the uninsured have a higher death risk than those with health insurance, according to a new study.
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Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore examined data from the National Trauma Data Bank for more than 400,000 patients between the ages of 18 and 64. They were treated at nearly 700 trauma centers across the country between 2001 and 2005. More than half of the patients were white and 47 percent had health insurance.
When they examined the data, researchers found the death rate for African Americans was 8.2 percent, 9.1 percent for Hispanic patients and 5.7 percent for white patients. The death rate was 8.6 percent for those without health insurance compared to 4.4 percent for patients with health insurance.
Mortality rates were substantially higher for all uninsured patients, almost doubling for African-American and Hispanic patients compared with white patients, the studys authors said. The absence of health insurance increased a trauma patients adjusted odds of death by almost 50 percent.
The authors said African-American and Hispanic patients were much more likely to be uninsured than white patients, and since a lack of health insurance could affect trauma outcomes because pre-existing conditions have gone untreated, this could partially account for the higher death rate. However, the researchers noted insurance status alone could not explain all racial disparities in trauma death rates.
Of the insured patients, both Hispanic and African-American patients had significantly higher odds of mortality compared with white patients, the authors wrote.
Mistrust, subconscious bias and stereotyping could be contributing to racial differences, they added.
SOURCE: Archives of Surgery, 2008;143:945-949
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