Open AccessRacial and Ethnic Health Services Disparities in Pediatric Anesthesia Practice: A Scoping Review
Author(s) -
Julia M. Rosenbloom,
Jennifer Mekonnen,
Lia E Tron,
Kiara Álvarez,
Margarita Alegrı́a
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of racial and ethnic health disparities
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.644
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2197-3792
pISSN - 2196-8837
DOI - 10.1007/s40615-020-00792-w
Subject(s) - medicine , ethnic group , medline , health equity , observational study , health care , anxiety , family medicine , health services research , public health , psychiatry , nursing , pathology , sociology , anthropology , political science , law , economics , economic growth
Racial and ethnic disparities in pediatric anesthesia health services could result in minority children being at increased risk of poor outcomes, such as pain, anxiety, or over-exposure to medications. Yet, a comprehensive understanding of the literature on such disparities does not exist to date. The objective of this study is to describe health services disparities in pediatric anesthetic care in the pre-, intra-, or post-operative period by synthesizing current literature. We searched the National Library of Medicine's PubMed/Medline, Embase, and Web of Science for articles published between January 1, 2007, and May 9, 2020, to identify literature on racial and ethnic health services disparities in pediatric anesthesia. We used the Institute of Medicine's definition of disparities. Health services were related to pre-, intra-, or post-operative anesthetic care of pediatric patients (< 18 years old). Out of 2110 studies, 10 studies met the criteria for inclusion. Nine out of the ten articles were single-institutional observational studies, based at tertiary hospitals. Sample sizes ranged from 74 to 37,618 discrete participants, for a total of 69,350 subjects across all studies. Results of these studies present low-quality evidence and heterogeneous conclusions regarding pediatric anesthesia health services disparities. This review demonstrates the paucity and diversity of research on racial and ethnic disparities in pediatric anesthesia health services and suggests how future work might utilize improved data and rigorous study designs.