Racial Disparities in Endovascular Aortic Aneurysm Repair

Racial and ethnic disparities are a critical issue in access to care within all fields of medicine. We hypothesized that analysis of a statewide administrative dataset would demonstrate disparities based on race with respect to access to this latest technology and the associated outcomes following endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR).

Utilizing de-identified data from the Florida State Agency for Health Care Administration, we identified patients based on International Classification of Diseases Ninth Revision procedure codes who underwent EVAR between the years 2000 and 2014. We then assigned these procedures with the specialty of the operating physician and then analyzed outcomes based on the race of the patient.

We identified 36,601 EVAR procedures during the study period. The average age of the total sample was 73.38 (±9.87), with the majority of the cohort being male (n = 29,034, 81.2%). Breakdown of patients within each race category was as follows: 17,056 (47.7%) non-Hispanic Whites, 1,630 (4.6%) non-Hispanic African Americans, 16,431 (46.0%) Hispanics, and 632 (1.8%) patients identified as "other." Data analysis showed significant differences among age at presentation, sex of patient, and comorbidity score of patients at presentation. There were significant differences in outcomes based on race with respect to total hospital charges, length of stay, disposition, and payer status.

Racial disparities were discovered with respect to EVAR treatment. African Americans present at younger ages, have the highest percentage of females requiring intervention, have the longest hospital stays, have the highest Medicaid payer source, have the highest in-hospital total charges of any racial group, and are more likely to be treated by academic practitioners. Hispanics present with the highest comorbidity scores compared to their counterparts and, along with African Americans, are more likely to be treated by nonvascular surgeons.