Introduction: Minority populations consistently demonstrate poorer medical and surgical outcomes. Given that surgery is a rapidly evolving field, we hypothesized that poorer surgical outcomes by black patients are related to lack of access to minimally invasive surgery (MIS).
Methods: We used data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a 20% stratified random sample of patients admitted to US hospitals. Utilizing standard ICD-9 diagnostic and procedure codes we identified all patients who underwent gastric bypass, fundoplication and appendectomy in 2004. Next, we determined use of MIS, surgical complications, and mortality as a function of race. Using logistic regression, we determined the effect of race on mortality after adjusting for patient factors, hospital characteristics and access to MIS.
Results: In 2004, a total of 88,545 patients underwent gastric bypass, fundoplication, and appendectomy in the U.S. Patients treated with MIS had significantly reduced morbidity and mortality (p
Session: Podium Presentation
Program Number: S079