Racial Health Disparities Research in Cardiothoracic Surgery Under-represented in Major Meetings

Abstract

Introduction: Black/African Americans and Latinos face significant health disparities and systemic inequities. Heart and lung disease are leading factors affecting morbidity and mortality in these groups. Given this disparity, we sought to determine how often this topic is presented at the most relevant United States annual cardiothoracic surgery meetings.

Methods: Specialty-specific annual meeting abstract books were queried between 2015 and 2021. We included the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, American Association for Thoracic Surgery, Western Thoracic Surgical Association, and the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association. Scientific abstract titles and content were searched for the following keywords and phrases: "racial health disparities," "race," "racism," "racial bias," "institutional racism," and "health disparities". If an abstract included a keyword or phrase, it was counted as a racial health disparity abstract. We calculated the proportion of racial health disparity abstracts and abstracts published as manuscripts in the meeting-associated journals.

Results: A total of 3664 abstracts were presented between 2015 and 2021. Of those, 0.90% (33/3664) abstracts presented contained at least one of the keywords or phrases. Of these abstracts, the percentage that went on to publication represented 0.38% (14/3664) of the total number of abstracts presented.

Conclusions: Abstracts on racial health disparities in cardiothoracic surgery represent a very small fraction of total meeting peer-reviewed content. There is a significant gap in research to identify and develop best practice strategies to address these disparities and mitigate structural racism within the care of underserved patients with cardiothoracic diseases.

Keywords: Cardiothoracic; Disparities; Racial; Research; Surgery; Under-represented.