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Hispanic Patients More Likely to Receive Deep Sedation While on Ventilator

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Feb 27, 2024.

By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Feb. 27, 2024 -- Hispanic individuals who are hospitalized with respiratory failure have a higher risk for receiving deep sedation while on a ventilator than non-Hispanic White patients, according to a study published online Feb. 5 in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Mari Armstrong-Hough, Ph.D., M.P.H., from New York University in New York City, and colleagues examined associations between Hispanic ethnicity and exposure to deep sedation among patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) using data from 1,006 participants in the control arm of a randomized trial of neuromuscular blockade for ARDS.

The researchers found that patients who identified as Hispanic had nearly fivefold increased odds of deep sedation (odds ratio, 4.98) on a given day versus non-Hispanic White patients. At the hospital level, those with at least one enrolled Hispanic patient kept all enrolled patients deeply sedated longer than hospitals without any enrolled Hispanic patients (85.8 percent of ventilator-days versus 65.5 percent).

"Given the widespread use of deep sedation we found in the study, this is an opportunity to improve sedation for everyone, but there is clearly a greater need to improve sedation for Hispanic patients because of what we know about disparities in their outcomes," coauthor Thomas Valley, M.D., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said in a statement.

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

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Posted February 2024

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