RESUMEN
RATIONALE: Prior research has demonstrated that medical journals rarely mention racism, potentially contributing to an incorrect understanding of and inappropriate interventions for health inequities affecting Black and Brown communities in the US. While this infrequency of mentions of racism has been documented in the general medical literature, it is unknown if this pattern extends to the addiction literature, where some have argued that structural racism has played a specific role in shaping policy and treatment. OBJECTIVE: To assess how frequently the addiction literature for the last 30 years has mentioned race and racism and if these rates vary with social movements. METHODS: We created an algorithm to download and process over 30,000 published articles published from 1990 to 2022 in five major addiction journals: Addiction, Addictive Behaviors, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Journal of Substance Abuse and Treatment, and International Journal of Drug Policy. Using this data, we reported temporal patterns of mentioning both race and racism across journals and article types. Further, we utilized interrupted time series analysis to identify if the social movements against police violence and the murder of George Floyd in 2020 were associated with significant changes in rates of mentioning racism. RESULTS: While over 30% of the articles in addiction medicine journals included the word race, only 1.5% of articles mentioned racism. Based on an interrupted time series model, after the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, mentions of racism increased in the addiction literature (OR = 3.21, 95% CI: [2.39, 4.32], P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: A large chasm remains between how often authors mention race versus racism in addiction medicine, a field with a unique history intertwined with structural racism. Addressing inequities in addiction outcomes, including burgeoning inequities in overdose deaths, will require acknowledging racism in the scientific literature.
RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: The efficacy of empiric calcium for patients with undifferentiated cardiac arrest has come under increased scrutiny, including a randomized controlled trial that was stopped early due to a trend towards harm with calcium administration. However, small sample sizes and non-significant findings have hindered precise effect estimates. In this analysis we evaluate the association of calcium administration with survival in a large retrospective cohort of patients with cardiac arrest treated in the emergency department (ED). METHODS: We conducted a retrospective review of medical records from two academic hospitals (one quaternary care center, one county trauma center) in San Francisco between 2011 and 2019. Inclusion criteria were patients aged greater than or equal to 18 years old who received treatment for cardiac arrest during their ED course. Our primary exposure was the administration of calcium while in the ED and the main outcome was survival to hospital admission. The association between calcium and survival to admission was estimated using a multivariable log-binomial regression, and also with two propensity score models. RESULTS: We examined 781 patients with cardiac arrest treated in San Francisco EDs between 2011 and 2019 and found that calcium administration was associated with decreased survival to hospital admission (RR 0.74; 95% CI 0.66-0.82). These findings remained significant after adjustment for patient age, sex, whether the cardiac arrest was witnessed, and including an interaction term for shockable cardiac rhythms (RR 0.60; 95% CI 0.50-0.72) and non-shockable cardiac rhythms (RR 0.87; 95% CI 0.76-0.99). Risk ratios for the association between calcium and survival to hospital admission were also similar between two propensity score-based models: nearest neighbor propensity matching model (RR 0.79; 95% CI 0.68-0.89) and inverse propensity weighted regression adjustment model (RR 0.75; 95% CI 0.67-0.84). CONCLUSIONS: Calcium administration as part of ED-directed treatment for cardiac arrest was associated with lower survival to hospital admission. Given the lack of statistically significant outcomes from smaller, more methodologically robust evaluations on this topic, we believe these findings have an important role to serve in confirming previous results and allowing for more precise effect estimates. Our data adds to the growing body evidence against the empiric use of calcium in cardiac arrest.