Introduction: Technological advances and institutional policies have minimized the barrier that language poses to patient care. Nonetheless, there remain challenges in access to care. Previous studies have shown that there may be some correlation between limited English proficiency and worse outcomes in the setting of traumatic injury. We hope to elucidate the effects of primary language spoken on thoracolumbar trauma surgical outcomes at a single, tertiary hospital.
Methods: A single-center, retrospective cohort study was performed on patients operated on for thoracolumbar trauma between the years of 2016 to 2022 at our tertiary-level hospital center. We collected demographic data including primary language spoken, patient comorbidities, and post-surgical complications. Outcome measures of procedure delay, including the time between arriving at the facility to being designated pre-procedure and the time between being designated pre-procedure and arriving at the operating room were recorded.
Results: Comparison of the comorbidities of the two language groups, English and Spanish, showed no significant difference. Analysis of our patient population showed a significant increase in delay for those who spoke Spanish as their primary language spoken compared to those who spoke English as their primary for the time between arrival at facility to being designated as pre-procedure. However, there was no significant increase in time between being designated as pre-procedure and being taken to the operating room. There also was not a significant difference in complication rate between patients of the two language groups. Other clinical outcomes such as discharge disposition did not vary greatly between the two language cohorts.
Conclusion : The results of our analysis indicate that there are some discrepancies between the measure of surgical care provided for English and Spanish-speaking thoracolumbar trauma patients at our tertiary-level institution. Further study will need to be conducted with other confounding factors to determine whether or not language is a predictor of procedure delay.
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