: Physician trainee safety attitudes at 1 institution improved between 2003 and 2008, and these trainees support many system-based solutions to adverse events. The changes seem incremental and responses do not fully align with all aspects of a safety culture. Cultural change in health care must involve trainees and address their attitudes.
Background Gastroparesis is a complex and poorly understood disease. The literature is lacking with respect to the epidemiology of patient comorbidities and their effect on gastric emptying. We aimed to describe the most common comorbid conditions among patients with gastroparesis in an urban population and quantify the effect of these comorbidities on the severity of delayed gastric emptying (DGE).
MethodsWe examined the medical records of all patients diagnosed with gastroparesis at a quaternary care center between 2014 and 2015. The severity of DGE was analyzed after patients were stratified for possible causative etiologies. Likelihood ratio tests were used to assess the significance of demographic and scintigraphic variation in this population.
ResultsOf the 221 patients, 56.1% were Caucasian and 31.7% were African American. Among these patients, 29.4% had evidence of medication-associated gastroparesis, 29.0% had diabetesassociated gastroparesis, and 31.7% had idiopathic disease. African American patients with gastroparesis were more likely to have diabetic gastroparesis than patients of other races (P=0.01). There was a statistically significant relationship between the number of major risk factors and the severity of a patient's DGE (P=0.004).Conclusions Among a diverse urban population, patients with DGE often carry multiple comorbid conditions that serve as risk factors for the development of gastroparesis, including prescriptions for narcotic medications. Greater numbers of these comorbid conditions are associated with more severe disease. Demographics are significantly associated with the etiology and severity of gastroparesis; in particular, African American patients are more likely to have diabetic gastroparesis than patients of other races.
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