Racial Disparities in Clinical Outcomes of Emergency Colectomies for Diverticulitis.

Objectives: The literature suggests that there are ongoing racial disparities in healthcare outcomes between patients in White and non-White populations. As such, we examined the outcomes of patients who underwent an emergency colectomy for diverticulitis.

Methods: We identified 4841 White and 590 non-White patients, which include Black/African American and Asian patients, using the 2016-2019 American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program databases. We compared Black/African American and Asian patients with White patients for differences in surgical outcomes.

Results: Non-White patients had more comorbidities than White patients ( 0.05). These patients underwent longer operations, developed more postoperative complications, and were more likely to have lengths of stay >30 days. When controlling for all of the covariates in multivariate logistic regression models, White race was independently associated with a 22.14% lower odds of a hospital stay >30 days compared with non-White patients ( = 0.001).

Conclusions: In this study, non-White patients developed more complications than did White patients and had longer hospitalizations. These disparities represent a more complex societal issue that cannot be managed perioperatively alone.