Background:
Although, in-hospital mortality from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) have declined in the United States recently, there is a gap in knowledge regarding racial differences in this trend. We sought to evaluate the effect of race on the trends in outcomes after Acute Myocardial Infarction among Medicaid patients in a nationwide cohort from 2007-2011
Methods:
We extracted data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) for all hospitalizations between 2007 and 2011 for Medicaid patients aged 45 years or older with principal diagnosis of AMI using ICD-9-CM codes. Primary outcome of this study was all cause in-hospital mortality. We then stratified hospitalizations by racial groups; Whites, African Americans and Hispanics, and assessed the time trends of in-hospital mortality before and after multivariate analysis.
Results:
The overall mortality from AMI among Medicaid patients declined during the study period (8.80% in 2007 to 7.46% in 2011). In the adjusted models, compared to 2007, in-hospital mortality from AMI for Medicaid patients decreased across the 3 racial groups; Whites (aOR= 0.88, CI=0.70-0.99), African Americans (aOR=0.76, CI=0.57-1.01), Hispanics (aOR=0.87, CI=0.66-1.25). While the length of hospital stay declined significantly among African American and Hispanic with 2 days and 1.76 days decline respectively, the length of stay remained unchanged for Whites. There was non-significant increase in the incidence of stroke across the various racial groups; Whites (aOR= 1.23, CI=0.90 -1.69), African Americans (aOR=1.10, CI=0.73 -1.64), Hispanics (aOR=1.03, CI=0.68-1.55) when compared to 2007.
Conclusion:
In this study, we found that in-hospital mortality from AMI among Medicaid patients have declined across the racial groups. However, while the length of stay following AMI declined for African Americans and Hispanics with Medicaid insurance, it has remained unchanged for Whites. Future studies are necessary to identify determinants of these significant racial disparities in outcomes for AMI.
Association of Decreased Glomerular Filtration Rate with Racial Differences in Survival after Acute Myocardial Infarction
