The trauma trap: what's causing inequalities in emergency care?

As US studies reveal worrying disparities in trauma treatment based on patient ethnicity, one surgeon urges more research into inequalities in UK emergency care

Ten years ago, when Dr Adil Haider, a trauma surgeon at Harvard Medical School, began investigating disparities in emergency centre outcomes based on information recorded in the US National Trauma Data Bank, he discovered a striking trend.

In the US, trauma is the number one cause of death for people under 47, and Haider had identified huge differences in patient survival rates based entirely on race. Compared to white patients with injuries of similar severity, black and Hispanic patients were found to have 20% and 50% greater likelihoods of death respectively.