Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) have inferior health care outcomes in the United States. Beyond linguistic access, some patients may face social, cultural, insurance-related, and financial barriers to quality care. In 2022, technological innovations should allow for complete interpretation in every setting in anesthesia and surgical care to mitigate these health disparities. An incident that happened to one of the authors represents a cardinal example. In mid-2020, a Brazilian Portuguese-speaking patient with LEP who had acute COVID-19 infection presented with a foreign body. He had been home – ill, but not hospitalized, with respiratory symptoms – when he ate fish soup that included an approximately 4 cm disc-like bone that lodged at the cricopharyngeus muscle in the upper esophagus and pushed on his larynx. After a thorough history and informed consent in his language, with a tablet interpreter due to COVID-19 restrictions, he was whisked from the emergency department...
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February 2023
Health Care Equity for Patients with Limited English Proficiency: Much Is Still ‘Lost in Translation’
Regan Bergmark, MD, FACS, FARS;
Regan Bergmark, MD, FACS, FARS
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Lalitha Sundararaman, MBBS, MD
Lalitha Sundararaman, MBBS, MD
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ASA Monitor February 2023, Vol. 87, 13–14.
Citation
Regan Bergmark, Gezzer Ortega, Lalitha Sundararaman; Health Care Equity for Patients with Limited English Proficiency: Much Is Still ‘Lost in Translation’. ASA Monitor 2023; 87:13–14 doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ASM.0000919520.36116.3a
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