Posted on 09/14/2015 4:06:24 PM PDT by don-o
Black children with acute appendicitis -- a clearly painful emergency -- are less likely than white children to get painkillers in the emergency room, researchers reported Monday.
And nearly as troubling, only about half of any of the kids got painkillers, even though they're strongly recommended in cases of appendicitis, the researchers found.
"Black patients with moderate pain were less likely to receive any analgesia, and black patients with severe pain were less likely to be treated with opioids," Dr. Monika Goyal of the Children's National Health System in Washington and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Pediatrics.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
And now we know why nurses have to drag around those computers everywhere.
The more statistics gathered, the more “issues” to be discovered.
“Black patients with moderate pain were less likely to receive any analgesia, and black patients with severe pain were less likely to be treated with opioids,”...”
Analgesia and Opioids, could be sisters in the projects.
BS story.
Black kids go to ghetto hospitals. Who wants to work there?
Minority doctors who got into med school on Affirmative Action.
Black Doctors are less well qualified. Affirmative Action guarantees this.
So blacks who visit black doctors will experience worse care, less qualified medical help,
I once had a black friend in college who went to a black doctor that was a butcher. I wonder if he’s still alive...
If you think there is discrimination between blacks and whites and pain meds you ought to see the discrimination against the elderly. It’s been documented - if you are old you won’t get the pain meds that a 30 y.o. will get.
Kids and old folks, no pain meds for you!
I read the entire article, and I saw no indication that they studied differences within the same hospital. Therefore, the entire study is worthless.
My take on this is that the authors were too eager to trot out sophisticated data analysis techniques, and did not focus where they should have, the study design.
I’m surprised they get any opiates as the watchdogs have gotten so overboard in monitoring these drugs. Docs are audited all the time and punished for giving too many prescriptions. Also, you don’t give much of anything until the diagnosis is confirmed. Additionally, the laporoscopic techniques are much less painful than older, open surgery.
When i ruptured my patellar tendon and went to the ER, I got a nice prescription to be filled on the way home and a referral to a surgeon.
There are several factors:
How far along are they? My daughter started showing signs early the evening before, but it got really bad in the morning. She was operated on within 90 minutes of hitting the hospital. She go no pain melds until it was confirmed to be appendicitis.
If we want the night before the pain management would have been different.
There are a lot of factors like that which need to be accounted for.
I think most of blacks’ pain meds are used up on gsw’s from other blacks.
If you read the article you would see they looked at 900,000 cases. That is a lot of cases. No real chance that the findings are not statistically significant. This means there IS a difference in the treatment and assignment of pain management.
There are plenty of possibilities of why. No kid should “suffer” through this. It’s not like the amount of meds is going to lead to addiction. Post op nowadays is pretty painless.
I find these studies interesting. The real causes are generally not the first ones people think of.
Pain tolerance is one possibility. Inner city ER’s that are much more guarded about handing out opiate painkillers due to past abuse is another.
From the article: “It’s possible that black kids are less likely to say they’re in pain”
This is an important variable to consider, but there are clearly others. I haven’t seen the actual publication, so will reserve judgment until I do. The reality is that the journals love this kind of publication, because it’s sensationalistic and they know they’re going to get significant press coverage from it. There are a ton of papers out there showing differences in the way women are treated. Do people actually think that doctors are making treatment decisions based on race or gender, and withholding care on this basis? Really?
“People should NEVER EVER believe these MSM propaganda pieces without going to the original study.”
Absolutely!
There is a paradox in (especially) social and medical study data analysis, where no difference can be seen in individual data sets, but when they are combined, apparent (but not real) differences appear. See Simpson’s Paradox.
I work in an all pediatric hospital and also worked a few years in the ED,and from my perspective,the whites,Hispanic and Asians sit by and are pretty stoic,while the blacks scream,rant and rave and get what they want,including pain meds.
End of story.
Linked in post 16
Thank you Thank you.You are 100% right-o
I’m sick of hauling that damn computer around.
Retirement can’t come soon enough.
I agree with your first point.
But generally speaking, this is not oxy or Percocet. Opiads are injected into the IV. So abuse in a case of fever and obvious pain (at least what I’ve witnessed) is minimal.
I am betting that some kids tolerate pain differently or they are hesitant to ask for it. I always have had my wife advocating for my kids and me. She never had a problem tracking down a nurse to follow up on stuff.
It’s called the Squeaky Wheel” syndrome.
I am certainly not a doctor, nurse or other type medical professional. However, I do recall reading summaries of legitimate medical studies that showed that blacks react differently to some medicines than do whites. It is possible that opiates and analgesics would be among them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.