2020 Online Salon
Racial Disparities in Outcomes Following Common Abdominal Surgical Procedures

Project Details
- Entrant Name: Ni-ka Ford
- Membership Type: Professional Submission
- Address: New York, New York USA
- Client: Michael Leitman, M.D.
- Copyright: 2020 Mount Sinai Health System
- Medium/software used: Photoshop and Illustrator
- Final presentation format: Journal Cover
- Primary Audience: Surgeons and Internal Medicine Specialists
Project Description
This illustration for the Journal of Surgical Research is in tandem with an article titled Racial Disparities in Outcomes Following Common Abdominal Surgical Procedures. The client asked for an illustration depicting a procedure, racial diversity, and survival. Significant disparities in access to minimally invasive approaches to abdominal procedures exists for Black patients. One of the most common types of these procedures is a laparoscopic cholecystectomy which is depicted in the background. Two patient’s hands are in the foreground inferior to the procedure reaching upwards to represent access to this more favorable operation. The Black patient’s wrist band is color coordinated with the Kapan Meier survival curve with the lower survival events while the White patient’s wrist band matches the color of the higher survival events. The cholecystectomy fades off near the bottom of the illustration to bring emphasis to the survival curves which represent the postoperative mortality rates.