Length of hospital stay is shorter in South Asian patients with acute pulmonary embolism

Abstract

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common diagnosis in UK hospitals and confers a significant hospital stay (LOS). There is very little evidence concerning ethnic variations on LOS in patients with PE. We sought to investigate ethnic variations in LOS in a large sample of 3440 patients with PE from 2000 to 2013 across seven hospitals in the north west of UK. We found that South Asian patients have significantly lower LOS compared with Caucasian patients. We discuss possible reasons for, and implications of, this finding.

The impact of ethnicity on the prevalence and length of hospital stay in patients with mitral regurgitation

“…Greater home support and differences in health beliefs are postulated to affect LOS in ethnic minority patients. Similar studies conducted in the UK, examining LOS in patients with Type 2 Diabetes, Pulmonary Embolism, Myocardial Infarction, Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, Aortic Valve Disease, Ischaemic Stroke and Atrial Fibrillation also found statistically significant disparities in LOS amongst ethnic patient populations [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In the US, African American patients presented for mitral valve surgery at a younger age and were less likely to undergo mitral valvuloplasty highlighting the need for improved screening [21].…”

“…Completely anonymous patient data was used and processed in accordance with local ethical research and development policy. The methodology has been previously described and used by our group and similar methodology has been used by other groups [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Ethnic variations in length of hospital stay in patients with atrial fibrillation

“…Whilst a novel observation in AF, the shorter length of hospital stay in South Asian patients has been shown by our group and others in conditions such as ischaemic stroke, myocardial infarction, type 2 diabetes mellitus, aortic stenosis and pulmonary embolism [10,11,13,18,20]. Whilst the reasons for a shorter length of stay in the South Asian and mixed ethnicity population are unknown, there is evidence that suggests that less support is offered to the ethnic minority population at the time of discharge and/or that they may be discharged prematurely and consequently have a greater chance of readmission [23].…”

“…Completely anonymous patient data was used and processed in accordance with local ethical research and development policy. The methodology has been previously described and used by our group and similar methodology has been used by other groups [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Psychiatric co-morbidities in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy

“…The prevalence data was assembled into five groups to aid analysis of trends over time. This methodology has been described by our group and others previously [1][2][3]9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].Between the years 2000 and 2013, 929,552 patients were admitted, 710 of which (0.08%) were labelled with a diagnosis of dilated cardiomyopathy. The majority of the population were made up of male patients (69%) and the mean age was 54.9 years ± 13.9 years (S.D.).…”