Patient factors may influence receipt of regional anesthesia during surgery
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Results presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting showed patient factors, such as sex, race and insurance status, may influence receipt of regional anesthesia during surgery.
“I think the underlying take-home message here is that, for whatever reason, reasons that we may not fully understand, people are at differential odds of getting certain types of care, and we as providers hopefully can address that by being consistent and precise in the type of care we want to deliver,” Alexander Beletsky, MD, of Riverside Community Hospital, told Healio.
Using data from the Hospital Corporation of America, Beletsky and colleagues examined demographic variables between patients who did and those who did not receive regional anesthesia with univariate statistical analysis and performed multivariate logistic regression to examine factors predictive of regional anesthesia receipt. Procedures of interest included total shoulder arthroplasty, total knee arthroplasty, carpal tunnel release, ACL reconstruction, ankle open reduction and internal fixation, total abdominal hysterectomy and arteriovenous fistula creation.
“We found that female sex is associated with decreased odds of getting regional anesthesia,” Beletsky said.
He also noted African American patients and patients of other races, such as Pacific Islander or Asian, had decreased odds of receiving regional anesthesia. When looking at hospital training status, Beletsky and colleagues found a mixed effect in which hospital training status increased the odds of regional anesthesia for some surgeries but decreased the odds of regional anesthesia for other surgeries.
“I think that this type of research with respect to health disparities has the potential to move the needle with respect to how we treat patients but also how society views people of different races, sexes, insurances, people of different brands, labels [and] identities,” Beletsky said. “I think this project is an awakening project, in a sense. I think it is one of those projects where we are looking, we are observing and now we are seeing these differences and so, hopefully, we can identify what is at the source ... and address those things. Then, I think, we can empower American health care.”
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Beletsky A, et al. Paper 2007. Presented at: American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting; Oct. 21-25, 2022; New Orleans.
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