Racial, Biological Sex, and Geographic Disparities of Deep Vein Thrombosis Prior to COVID-19 Era from a Nationwide Inpatient Sample (2016-2019)

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is commonly encountered as it impacts approximately 80 patients per 100,000. While there have some smaller scale studies investigating racial, biological sex, and or geographic disparities of DVT, there has yet to be a larger scale study on the topic. The aim of this work is to report these disparities in an inpatient sample of the United States (U.S.) prior to COVID-19.

Methods:

We performed a 4-year (2016-2019) analysis of the National Inpatient Sample database pertaining to the U.S. We identified all adult inpatients diagnosed with a DVT. Each patient is weighted to produce both national and regional estimates. We calculated the national cumulative incidence (per thousand inpatients, ‰) of DVT for race and biological sex, and the cumulative regional incidences (‰) of DVT.

Results:

A total of 887,050 DVT inpatients were estimated during 2016-2019, which represent 7.58 (‰) of total inpatients in the U.S. National cumulative incidence of DVT in inpatients was highest in blacks (9.07‰) followed by whites (7.69‰), Hispanics (5.99‰), Native Americans (5.36‰), and Asian/Pacific Islanders (4.29‰) (Figure 1). On basis of biological sex, national cumulative incidence of DVT was highest in males (9.01‰) followed by females (6.53‰). Regional cumulative incidence of DVT was highest in the Middle Atlantic (8.65‰) followed by East North Central (8.29‰), Mountain (8.12‰), South Atlantic (7.90‰), Pacific (7.00‰), East South Central (6.95‰), West South Central (6.87‰), West North Central (6.31‰), and New England (6.04‰) (Figure 2).

Conclusions: In a nationwide inpatient sample of the U.S. prior to COVID-19, blacks and males have the highest cumulative incidence of DVT, while Asians/Pacific islanders and women have the lowest. The Middle Atlantic has the highest regional incidence of DVT, while New England has the lowest.