Racial and Health Insurance Differences in Patient Outcomes after Surgical Treatment for Cauda Equina syndrome.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective database evaluation.

OBJECTIVES: To study the association between race, healthcare insurance, mortality, postoperative visits, and reoperation within a hospital setting in patients with cauda equina syndrome (CES) undergoing surgical intervention.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: CES can lead to permanent neurological deficits if diagnosis is missed or delayed. Evidence of racial or insurance disparities in CES is sparse.

METHODS: Patients with CES undergoing surgery from 2000-2021 were identified from the Premier Healthcare Database. Six-month postoperative visits and 12-month reoperations within the hospital were compared by race (i.e., White, Black or Other [Asian, Hispanic, or other]) and insurance (i.e., Commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, or Other) using Cox proportional hazard regressions; covariates were used in the regression models to control for confounding. Likelihood ratio tests were used to compare model fit.

RESULTS: Among 25,024 patients, most were White (76.3%), followed by Other race (15.4% [ 8.8% Asian, 7.3% Hispanic, and 83.9% other]) and Black (8.3%). Models with race and insurance combined provided the best fit for estimating risk of visits to any setting of care and reoperations. White Medicaid patients had the strongest association with higher risk of 6-month visits to any setting of care versus White patients with commercial insurance (HR: 1.36 (1.26,1.47)). Being Black with Medicare had a strong association with higher risk of 12-month reoperations versus White commercial patients (HR: 1.43 (1.10,1.85)). Having Medicaid versus Commercial insurance was strongly associated with higher risk of complication-related (HR: 1.36 (1.21, 1.52)) and ER visits (HR: 2.26 (2.02,2.51)). Medicaid had significantly higher risk of mortality compared to Commercial patients (HR: 3.19 (1.41,7.20)).

CONCLUSIONS: Visits to any setting of care, complication-related, ER visits, reoperation, or mortality within the hospital setting after CES surgical treatment varied by race and insurance. Insurance type had a stronger association with the outcomes than race.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: III.