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Lack of Racial Diversity in Surgery and Pathology Textbooks Depicting Diseases of the Breast
Maissa Trabilsy1, Arielle Roberts2, Tahina Ahmed1
1SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, College of Medicine, Brooklyn, New York.
Introduction:
The lack of racial diversity depicted in medical education texts may contribute to an implicit racial bias among clinicians. This bias influences outcomes, as familiarity with the various cutaneous manifestations of disease is essential to making an accurate diagnosis. To better understand the racial disparities in breast surgery, we sought to determine the extent of skin tone representation depicted in images of breast surgery and pathology textbooks.
Methods:
Textbooks were screened for color images of conditions with sufficient skin tissue present to assign the Fitzpatrick skin phototype (FSP). Figures were independently assigned an FP score (range: 1-6), and subdivided into "light skin" (FP 1-3) and "dark skin" (FP 4-6). Number of figures in each category and percentage of patients with each skin tone were calculated.
Results:
557 figures were included. Among 12 textbooks reviewed, seven textbooks were from the discipline of surgery, while five were pathology-related. Textbook year of publication spanned from 1996 to 2018. Overall, 533 (95.7%) figures depicted patients with light skin color versus 24 (4.3%) with dark skin color. There was no association between FP score and year of textbook publication (P = 0.69).
Conclusions:
Patient images in breast textbooks are overwhelmingly of light skin tones, excluding patients with darker skin tones. The dearth of images depicting dark skinned individuals did not improve over time. Inclusion of patients of color in future textbooks may help reduce racial disparities within breast cancer care.
