Associate Professor Northwell Health Houston, Texas, United States
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has prompted lasting changes to the practice of medicine in the New York City area. People moving out of populated urban areas and the increasing popularity of work from home has seen resulting shifts in patient populations. Research into changing demographics in spine surgery patients following the COVID-19 pandemic remains limited, however.
Methods: The New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) database was queried for all adult spine surgery claims from the 5 boroughs of New York City and Westchester County from 2019 through 2022. Data analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel version 16.49.
Results: There were 26,066 spine surgery claims in 2019, 20,437 in 2020, 24,829 in 2021, and 26,271 surgeries in 2022. The average age of patients has been steadily decreasing over this period, from 56.6 years in 2019 down to 55.8 years in 2020, 55.3 years in 2021, and 54.7 years in 2022. The race/ethnicity breakdown of patients has also been changing. The proportion of White patients has decreased from 34.2% in 2019 to 27.6% in 2022. The percentage of Black and Hispanic patients are minimally decreased, from 19.3% in 2019 to 18.3% in 2022 for patients identifying as Black/African American and from 21.0% in 2019 to 20.4% in 2022 for those identifying as Hispanic/Latino. Those identifying as Asian or other race have been slowly increasing. Asian patients increased from 5.4% in 2019 to 5.9% in 2022. Other race has increased from 19.2% to 26.5%.
Conclusion : Patients undergoing spine surgery in the New York City metropolitan area are trending towards a slightly younger age at surgery post-pandemic. The proportion of White, Black, and Hispanic patients is decreasing while that of Asian and other race patients is increasing.
