Relationship of Physician identified Patient Race and Ethnicity to Use of Computed Tomography in Pediatric Blunt Torso Trauma.
OBJECTIVES The objective was to determine whether a child's race or ethnicity as determined by the treating physician is independently associated with receiving abdominal computed tomography (CT) after blunt torso trauma. METHODS We performed a planned secondary analysis of a prospective observational cohort of children 18 years old presenting within 24 hours of blunt torso trauma to 20 North American emergency departments (EDs) participating in a pediatric research network, 2007 2010. Treating physicians documented race/ethnicity as white non Hispanic, black non Hispanic, or Hispanic. Using a previously derived clinical prediction rule, we classified each child's risk for having an intra abdominal injury undergoing acute intervention to define injury severity. We performed multivariable analyses using generalized estimating equations to control for confounding and for clustering of children within hospitals. RESULTS Among 12,044 enrolled patients, treating physicians documented race/ethnicity as white non Hispanic (n 5,847, 54.0% black non Hispanic (n 3,687, 34.1% or Hispanic of any race (n 1,291, 11.9% Overall, 51.8% of white non Hispanic, 32.7% of black non Hispanic, and 44.2% of Hispanic children underwent abdominal CT imaging. After age, sex, abdominal ultrasound use, risk for intra abdominal injury undergoing acute intervention, and hospital clustering were adjusted for, the likelihood of receiving an abdominal CT was lower (odds ratio [OR] 0.8, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.7 to 0.9) for black non Hispanic than for white non Hispanic children. For Hispanic children, the likelihood of receiving an abdominal CT did not differ from that observed in white non Hispanic children (OR 0.9, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.1) CONCLUSIONS After blunt torso trauma, pediatric patients identified by the treating physicians as black non Hispanic were less likely to receive abdominal CT imaging than those identified as white non Hispanic. This suggests that nonclinical factors influence clinician decision making regarding use of abdominal CT in children. Further studies should focus on explaining how patient race can affect provider choices regarding ED radiographic imaging.
Academic emergency medicine official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine