Limited English proficiency is not consistently associated with perioperative mortality

Narrative synthesis #

Across the review's in-hospital and all-cause mortality studies, LEP was only rarely associated with mortality in adjusted analyses. Of 6 in-hospital-mortality studies, 5 found no significant association; only 1 found significantly higher in-hospital mortality in an aortic-aneurysm-repair subcohort. Of 5 all-cause/overall-survival studies, 4 found no association (1 detected longer median survival for LEP in a stage III–IV pancreatic-cancer subcohort in unadjusted analysis). The review groups mortality among the clinical outcomes "less frequently associated with LEP." Certainty/GRADE appraisal is left for expert review.

"Five of these studies found no significant association between LEP and in-hospital mortality; only 1 study found a subcohort of patients with LEP undergoing aortic aneurysm repair who had significantly higher in-hospital mortality than those with English proficiency in adjusted analysis." (Joo, 2023, p. 8)

"Overall, few studies found a significant association between LEP and mortality in adjusted analyses." (Joo, 2023, p. 8)