Quickshot: Racial, Biological Sex, and Geographic Disparities of Pulmonary Embolism Prior to COVID-19 Era from a Nationwide Inpatient Sample (2016-2019)

Pulmonary Embolism (PE) is commonly encountered as it impacts approximately 1 patient per 1,000. While there have some smaller scale studies investigating racial, biological sex, and or geographic disparities of PE, 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 PE. Each patient is weighted to produce both national and regional estimates. We calculated the national cumulative incidence (per thousand inpatients, ‰) of PE for race and biological sex, and the cumulative regional incidences (‰) of PE.

Results:

A total of 946,355 PE inpatients were estimated during 2016-2019, which represent 8.09 (‰) of total inpatients in the U.S. National cumulative incidence of PE in inpatients was highest in blacks (10.36‰) followed by whites (8.30‰), Native Americans (6.02‰), Hispanics (5.10‰), and Asian/Pacific Islanders (4.42‰) (Figure 1). On basis of biological sex, national cumulative incidence of PE was highest in males (8.92‰) followed by females (7.47‰). Regional cumulative incidence of PE was highest in Mountain (9.62‰) followed by East North Central (8.81‰), West North Central (8.46‰), East South Central (8.31‰), South Atlantic (8.27‰), New England (8.05‰), Middle Atlantic (7.87‰), West South Central (7.18‰), and Pacific (7.04‰) (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 PE, while Asians/Pacific islanders and women have the lowest. The Mountain region has the highest regional incidence of PE, while the Pacific region has the lowest.