News: Pre-pandemic sepsis mortality for Black patients higher than other racial groups, new study suggests
Before the pandemic, Black patients diagnosed with sepsis had a 33% higher risk of long-term nursing home (NH) stay or death following hospital discharge when compared with their White counterparts, according to a new study from JAMA Network Open.
The study sought to examine “whether the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with changes in long-term NH stay or death among older adults with sepsis, and whether these changes were greater in individuals from racial and ethnic minoritized groups.”
To this end, the authors reviewed 2,964,517 community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with sepsis between 2016 and 2021. The researchers also noted that, while there was a clear discrepancy between Black patients and other racial groups before the pandemic, during the pandemic itself, the rate of long-term NH stay, or death did not differ greatly between groups.
“In the present study, we found that while all individuals experienced slight increases in long-term NH stay or death during the pandemic compared with before the pandemic, minoritized racial and ethnic groups did not experience greater increases in long-term NH stay or death than White individuals,” the researchers noted.
The most prominent limitation to the study, according to the researchers, was the fact that its conclusions were limited solely to older sepsis patients: “Our findings may not be generalizable to individuals younger than 65 years, those hospitalized with other serious medical conditions, or individuals who lose independence without a prior hospitalization.”
Editor’s note: To read the JAMA Network Open study, click here.