Published ahead of print on June 15, 2006, doi:10.1164/rccm.200601-007OC
© 2006 American Thoracic Society doi: 10.1164/rccm.200601-007OC
Mortality in Patients Hospitalized for Asthma Exacerbations in the United StatesDivision of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Jerry A. Krishnan, M.D., Ph.D., Section of Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: jerry.krishnan{at}gmail.com Rationale: Hospitalizations for asthma exacerbations are common in the United States, but there are no national estimates of outcomes in this population. It is also not known if race disparities in asthma deaths exist among hospitalized patients. Objectives: To estimate outcomes of patients hospitalized for asthma in the United States and to determine if the risk of death in this population is higher among black patients compared with white patients. Methods: We used the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for 2000. Admissions for asthma exacerbations among patients > 5 yr of age were included. Mortality was the primary outcome; secondary outcomes were length of stay and total hospital charges. Measurements and Main Results: In-hospital asthma mortality was 0.5% (99% confidence interval [CI], 0.4–0.6), with mean hospital stay of 2.7 d (99% CI, 2.6–2.8 d) and $9,078 (99% CI, $8,300–9,855) in hospital charges. Deaths in this population accounted for about one-third of all asthma deaths reported in the United States. Black patients hospitalized for asthma exacerbations were less likely to die when compared with white patients (0.3 vs. 0.6%; p < 0.001). However, in multivariable analyses, there were no significant race differences in hospital deaths. Conclusions: Mortality among patients hospitalized for asthma exacerbations accounts for one-third of all deaths from asthma. The higher overall risk of death from asthma in black patients compared with white patients in the United States is not explained by race differences in hospital deaths and therefore is attributable to factors preceding hospitalization.
Key Words: costs • epidemiology • length of stay • mortality • race This article has been cited by other articles:
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