“If we delay a diagnosis or if we delay treatment or management of the patient, that can be detrimental to their health,” lead researcher Dr. Katiria Pintor Jimenez told NBC News.
The study's lead author, Dr. Katiria Pintor Jimenez, an internal medicine resident at Morehouse, and five other researchers analyzed the 2020 medical records of more than 11,000 people who arrived at the Grady Memorial Hospital emergency room in Atlanta with chest pain."Chest pain is basically a very kind of alarming complaint that patients come in with because it can be coming from the heart or coming from the lungs," Pintor Jimenez told NBC News.
These delays could have adverse consequences in the overall outcome and well-being of Latino patients, Pintor Jimenez said. Latinos were, on average, younger and had lower blood pressure compared to all other people treated for chest pain in the emergency room — including white, Black and Asian people, according to the study. Hispanic women were also 58 percent more likely to arrive at the emergency room reporting chest pain than Hispanic men.
Latinos have consistently been overrepresented in the uninsured population nationwide.