Racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes among patients with hip fracture: A retrospective matched cohort study

oleh: Emmanuella Oduguwa, Vikram A. Aggarwal, Senthil Sambandam, Dane K. Wukich

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Elsevier 2025-06-01

Deskripsi

Introduction: This study investigated the impact of race/ethnicity on post-operative complications, revisions, costs, and time to admission among patients with hip fracture surgically managed with hip plating, nailing, hemiarthroplasty, total hip arthroplasty, and screw fixation. We hypothesize that patients from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds will have higher post-operative complications, revisions, and costs. Methods: Patient data was collected from PearlDiver, a large commercial insurance database, from 2014 to 2017. Patients from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds were matched to White patients according to age and gender, as well as comorbid tobacco use, diabetes, and obesity. Patients were also matched by Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and Elixhauser Comorbidity Index (ECI). Post-operative complications, revisions, and costs at 30, 90, and 365 days were evaluated among the racial/ethnic groups. Results: Data from 9,494 White (93.34 %), 500 Black (4.92 %), 94 Asian (0.92 %), and 82 Hispanic (0.81 %) patients with hip fracture who underwent hip surgery was analyzed. Patients from every minority group had statistically significant increased CCI and ECI. Unmatched Black patients experienced more complications. Unmatched Black patients also had higher costs at all time points (p < 0.0001). Unmatched Hispanic patients had higher costs at one year. Conclusions: The results indicated that unmatched Black patients with hip fracture undergoing hip surgery had significantly increased rates of complications and total costs at every time point as compared to White patients. Matched Black patients had higher costs at 90 and 365 days. The results of the study partially support our hypothesis that minority patients would have greater complications and costs than White patients. A potential explanation for why these associations were not observed among Asian and Hispanic patients was because there were fewer patients from these racial/ethnic backgrounds in the database that met study criteria. Achieving health equity requires efforts to improve health disparities for all members of society despite racial/ethnic background.