"For decades millions of Black folks don’t trust the health care system in America, with good reason cause its racist! Too many Black folks go in the hospital and die after they get out.” - CNK
Health studies for decades have repeatedly shown that Black patients’ experiences with the U.S. health care system are worse than those of white patients at almost every stage, from infancy to geriatric care.
I remember as a child I would often hear older Blacks say that too many folks they knew had went in the hospital to have surgery then released and died within weeks; what they said was over 50 years ago, it was true then and its true now.
So it’s not surprising that Black patients have higher rates of post-surgical deaths across a wide range of surgical procedures. Moreover, the past several decades research has shown that Black patients in the United States tend to fare worse than their white counterparts do after undergoing major surgical procedures.
Studies have found 20–50 percent higher rates of mortality among Black patients, compared to white patients. A paper published in Pediatrics found that after surgery, Black children had greater odds than white children of developing complications such as sepsis, unplanned reintubation or reoperation, and severe bleeding. Black children also had a nearly 3.5 times higher chance of dying within 30 days of surgery.
Regarding Black males, Black men have a higher death rate within 30 days of surgery compared with any other subgroup of race and sex according to a study of adults in the United States published in The BMJ. This inequality in death rate was mainly observed for elective, or planned, surgeries, where the death rate for Black men was 50% higher than that of White men.
