Experts chose to study a national survey data, which included above 900,000 cases of children with diagnosed acute appendicitis, the incidences of which took place from 2003 to 2010.
Advertisement
The study found that black children were more likely to be given tylenol or ibuprofen.
Children or teen with appendicitis, a condition which usually requires opioid as a medication, undergo a painful surgery yet lead author Dr. Monika K. Goyal of the Children’s National Health System in Washington D.C. said that that only less than 60 percent of all the kids received some kind of pain medication. Forty-one percent of all child patients got an opiod drug, while a slim 12 percent of black children were given an opioid drug for pain.
The study found that 57 percent of children received any medication for their pain while in the emergency room. They thought studying appendicitis would be a good starting point since there’s broad agreement among experts that it’s a condition that merits pain relief.
Goyal reported to MedPage Today that her team specifically examined appendicitis because it is a painful surgical condition with widely accepted standard practices regarding the treatment of pain with opioids.
“Not all patients with appendicitis experience the same pain – it is highly variable depending on the duration of symptoms and the degree of inflammation”.
However, he did go on to add that analgesics should typically be prescribed for appendicitis.
“The bottom line with all of this is that pain matters, its treatment should be patient centered and individualized, and every patient should feel reassured that they will be treated equally”, Dr. Neil L. Schechter, coauthor of the study, said. They blamed a bias against opioids combined with an unconscious bias against African-Americans for the disparity.
Eric W. Fleegler, dictor at the Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, offered a statement of his own saying that things may not be as grave as they sound.
Goyal added that factors such as insurance coverage, societal status, ability to pay, and especially race should not be grounds for receiving subpar care in the emergency room.
“Really understanding racial disparities in healthcare is extremely important”, Goyal said.
Advertisement
What’s more, some of the choices made by medical staffs might be justifiable.
