Does Race Correlate With Extended Hospital Length of Stay Following Elective Foot and Ankle Procedures?

Introduction The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of race and ethnicity on the length of stay in hospitals following elective foot and ankle procedures. We aimed to determine whether (1) there are differences in the amount of time spent in a hospital following surgery between black, Hispanic, and white patients and (2) to assess for differences in complications. Methods A retrospective review of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) was conducted for 14 different foot and ankle procedures between 2016 and 2021. International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) and International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes guided the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Patient demographics, comorbidities, and postoperative outcomes and length of stay in hospitals were collected. A biostatistician was used to conduct all analyses. Regression analyses were used to assess differences between length of stay between races. Demographic variables, comorbidities and outcomes were analyzed using χ 2 and Fisher exact tests. Results The database search yielded 16,126 patients with a weighted sum of 84,085. White patients were older on average (61.98 years) than black patients (52.30), with an average length of stay of 3.08 days and black patients had an average of 3.35 days (P < .0001). Prevalence of pulmonary embolism, pneumonia, myocardial infarction, and stroke were not significantly different between the groups (P > .05). Conclusion Our study found that minority patients experience longer stays in the hospital following elective foot and ankle procedures. No differences were found between complication rates among the 2 groups. These findings suggest a need for further research into reasons for longer stays in this patient population.