• Erin West, Laurinda Jackson, Howard Greene, Donald J Lucas, Kyle D Gadbois, and Pamela M Choi.
• Department of General Surgery, Naval Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, CA 92134, USA.
• Mil Med. 2024 Aug 30; 189 (9-10): e2140e2145e2140-e2145.

IntroductionRacial minorities have been found to have worse health care outcomes, including perioperative adverse events. We hypothesized that these racial disparities may be mitigated in a military treatment facility, where all patients have a military service connection and are universally insured.Materials And MethodsThis is a single institution retrospective review of American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program data for all procedures collected from 2017 to 2020. The primary outcome analyzed was risk-adjusted 30-day postoperative complications compared by race.ResultsThere were 6,941 patients included. The overall surgical complication rate was 6.9%. The complication rate was 7.3% for White patients, 6.5% for Black patients, 12.6% for Asian patients, and 3.4% for other races. However, after performing patient and procedure level risk adjustment using multivariable logistic regression, race was not independently associated with surgical complications.ConclusionsRisk-adjusted surgical complication rates do not vary by race at this military treatment facility. This suggests that postoperative racial disparities may be mitigated within a universal health care system.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

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