Giving Compass' Take:

• Recent studies show that Black children are more likely to face deadlier outcomes and more complications after surgeries, compared to white children. 

• How can the medical field look at what factors are causing these health disparities? 

• Learn about maternal mortality rates in pregnant Black women. 

Black children’s outcomes after having surgery long seemed to mimic those of adults in the United States. Poverty, lack of access to health care and resources, and predispositions were thought to put Black children at higher risk of death and complications, based on previous studies.

Now, as it turns out, race may play a significant role.

New research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics found that post-surgery, Black children are more likely to suffer complications and die than white children.

Researchers studied 172,549 children under the age of 17 included in the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program-Pediatric database from 2012 to 2017. The database collected the outcomes of children undergoing surgical procedures at different medical sites in the US.

Children included in the database ranged from healthy to having a mild disease, such as a seizure disorder. More children were mildly sick than healthy and had similarly low rates of different disorders and diseases before surgery regardless of race.

"The expectation should be that complication rates and/or mortality among healthy children won't vary based on racial category — what we found is that they do," Olubukola Nafiu, pediatric anesthesiologist and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

While the database showed post-surgery death, complications, and adverse effects were low overall, Black children were 3.5 times more likely to die within 30 days after undergoing surgery and had an 18% greater chance of developing complications than white children.

The higher death rates might be explained by Black children experiencing more seriously harmful events after the surgery, the study said.

Read the full article about death rates of children in surgery complications by Leah Rodriguez at Global Citizen.