Beyond demographics: Missing sociodemographics in surgical research

Reporting sociodemographic data in research is critical to describe participants, and to identify contributing factors for patient experience, outcomes and heterogeneity of treatment effect (HTE). Social determinants of health and clinical health characteristics are important drivers of outcomes, an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of surgery 2020-06, Vol.219 (6), p.926-931
Main Authors: Stadeli, Kathryn M., Hantouli, Mariam N., Brewer, Elena G., Austin, Elizabeth, Doll, Kemi M., Lavallee, Danielle C., Davidson, Giana H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clinical outcomes
Clinical trials
Demographics
Demography
Documents
Education
Educational attainment
Epidemiology
Health education
Health literacy
Health services
Heterogeneity
Medical records
Mental health
Minority & ethnic groups
Patients
Quality of life
Researchers
Risk analysis
Risk factors
Sex
Sociodemographics
Socioeconomic factors
Studies
Surgeons
Surgery
Surgical outcomes
Variables
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Summary:Reporting sociodemographic data in research is critical to describe participants, and to identify contributing factors for patient experience, outcomes and heterogeneity of treatment effect (HTE). Social determinants of health and clinical health characteristics are important drivers of outcomes, and prospective studies collecting participant-reported data offer an opportunity to report these sociodemographics and evaluate for associations with outcomes. Clinical trials have underreported these factors previously, but reporting has not been examined in surgical research. We reviewed prospective studies collecting participant-reported sociodemographic data from four surgical journals in 2016. The proportion of studies reporting variables of interest in “Table 1” is described. Variables included information on patient identity (e.g., age, sex), clinical health (e.g., disease-specific characteristics, BMI), individual-level (e.g., education, income) and interpersonal-level (e.g., marital status, support) risk factors. Forty-one publications met inclusion criteria. All reported ≥1 patient identity variable, 93% reported ≥1 clinical characteristic, 63% reported ≥1 individual-level risk factor, and 7% reported an interpersonal-level risk factor. Age, sex, and disease-specific characteristics were reported most commonly (98%, 98%, 88% respectively). 40% of studies reported comorbidities, though
ISSN:0002-9610
1879-1883
DOI:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2019.07.038