Canadian Journal of Surgery
Socioeconomic status and loss to follow-up after orthopedic trauma surgery
By Yvonne Tan, Mina Tohidi, Imran Syed and 1 others.
Abstract
Background
Follow-up after surgery is important, to monitor patient recovery and to identify potential complications. Our primary objective was to determine the association between patient socioeconomic status and loss to follow-up after orthopedic trauma surgery.
Methods
We performed a retrospective cohort study of patients aged 18 to 75 years who underwent orthopedic trauma surgery at a trauma centre in Ontario between January 2022 and December 2023. Patient socioeconomic status was determined by linking postal code with Material and Social Deprivation Index and presented as quintiles. We measured clinic follow-up attendance for 6 months after index surgery. We used logistic regression modelling to estimate the association between material deprivation quintiles and loss to follow-up, accounting for baseline patients and perioperative factors.