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Updated: Jul 8, 2026
Murine Model of Controlled Cortical Impact for the Induction of Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: August 16, 2019
Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes: Insights From a Nationwide Analysis
Hongyin Lai1, Hunza Ahmad2, Talha Mubashir3
1Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, School of Public Health, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston , Texas , USA.
Background And Objectives:
To examine the effects of racial and socioeconomic disparities on clinical outcomes: in-hospital mortality, discharge dispositions, and hospital length of stay (LOS) among patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) stratified by race and socioeconomic status (SES).
Methods:
We conducted a retrospective analysis by analyzing the 1995-2015 Nationwide Inpatient Sample database. Adjusted logistic regressions and multinomial logistic regression models with and without propensity score matching were applied to investigate the effects of disparities on clinical outcomes.
Results:
African American and Hispanic patients with TBI had a lower risk of in-hospital mortality, longer hospital LOS, and lower likelihood of being discharged to rehabilitation compared with White patients. The TBI patients with poor SES (pSES) had lower in-hospital mortality and were more likely to leave against medical advice compared with non-pSES TBI patients.
Conclusion:
Racial and socioeconomic disparities had significant influences on in-hospital mortality, discharge dispositions, and hospital LOS among the TBI population. Our study observed pSES TBI patients had a lower likelihood of in-hospital mortality than non-pSES patients, which may be partially attributed to the fact that most of the pSES TBI patients were hospitalized in urban teaching hospitals and hospitals with large bed size. In effect, our data suggest that the Social Safety Net of the United States is effective in preventing mortality in patients with TBI.
