Relation of Race, Ethnicity and Cardiac Surgeons to Operative Mortality Rates in Primary Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting in California

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether African American, Hispanic, and Asian patients in California were more likely to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) by cardiac surgeons with higher risk-adjusted mortality rates (RAMRs). Clinical data from the California CABG Outcomes Reporting Program were analyzed for all patients who underwent isolated CABG from 2003 to 2006 by surgeons who performed ≥ 10 operations. Surgeons were divided into quintiles on the basis of their RAMRs, with the top-performing surgeons in the first quintile and the lowest performing surgeons in the fifth quintile. There were 72,845 isolated CABG procedures performed by 303 surgeons, including 49,886 in white, 9,380 in Hispanic, 6,867 in Asian, and 2,750 in African American patients. African American and Asian patients underwent CABG by surgeons with higher mean RAMRs (2.90% and 2.99%, respectively) compared with the state average of 2.65% (p