Research Day
RACE AND ETHNICITY IN ORTHOPAEDIC RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS: ARE THEY FREQUENTLY REPORTED? - A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Document Type
Abstract
Date
2021
Abstract
Introduction: Racial healthcare disparities have been observed across many medical subspecialties. The frequency of reporting and analyzing race and ethnicity in orthopaedic clinical trials has not been previously been reported. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency that race and ethnicity are reported and analyzed in orthopaedic clinical trials.
Methods: The top ten orthopaedic journals by impact factor were manually screened from. Published clinical randomized controlled trials from 2015-2019 related to orthopaedics were included. Studies were evaluated using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool and reported/analyzed demographics, including age, sex, race, and ethnicity, were recorded.
Results: 482 articles met inclusion criteria. Of these 482 trials, 460 (95.4%) reported age and 456 (94.6%) reported sex, while 35 (7.3%) reported race and 15 (3.1%) reported ethnicity. 79 studies (16.4%) analyzed age and 72 studies (14.9%) analyzed sex, while 6 studies (1.2%) analyzed race and 1 study (0.2%) analyzed ethnicity. The orthopaedic subspecialty of spine was found to report race (23.5%) and ethnicity (17.6%) more frequently than all the other subspecialties, while sports medicine reported race and/or ethnicity in only 3 out of 150 trials (2.0%).
Conclusion: Race and ethnicity are not frequently reported or analyzed in orthopaedic randomized controlled trials. Social context, personal challenges, and economic challenges should be considered while analyzing the impact of race and ethnicity on outcomes.