TY - JOUR AU - Gasulla,Ó. AU - Sarría-Santamera,A. AU - Mazaira-Font,F.A. AU - García-Montero,C. AU - Fraile-Martinez,O. AU - Cantalapiedra,D. AU - Carrillo-Rodríguez,M.F. AU - Gómez-Valcárcel,B. AU - Ortega,M.Á. AU - Álvarez-Mon,M. AU - Asúnsolo,A. KW - clinical biases KW - clinical variation KW - healthcare quality KW - social stigma T1 - Cultural Biases and Clinical Variation LA - eng PY - 2025/12/01/ T2 - Clinics and Practice SN - 2039-7283 VL - 15 IS - 12 PB - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) AB - Background: This study investigates the possible role of cultural biases in clinical variation. Methods: An observational, analytical, and retrospective cohort design, using a Spanish primary care database, was used, on which a cross-sectional analysis was performed. Diseases were classified into the following: generic conditions with established protocols (control group), specialist-diagnosed diseases, women’s diseases, and psychiatric diseases. Diagnostic incidence was calculated across 25 geographical clusters, and variability was measured using the coefficient of variation (CV). To test systematic differences, multivariate linear regression models were adjusted for socio-demographics and healthcare system proxies. Results: The final sample for analysis consisted of 617,222 women aged 15 to 65, with a mean age of 43. The results did not reveal significant variability between generic and specialized diseases, but women’s and psychiatric diseases showed consistently higher CVs in all models (p < 0.05), indicating that approximately 20% to 30% of the clinical variation observed in these groups was unexplained. Conclusions: Although we cannot establish causality, these findings may suggest that cultural taboos and gender biases likely contribute to unjustified clinical variation, highlighting cultural bias as a plausible explanatory factor. DO - 10.3390/CLINPRACT15120229 UR - https://portalcientifico.uah.es/documentos/695949310f46d160047a0932 DP - Dialnet - Portal de la Investigación ER -