Hospitalization rates decreased in patients with sarcoidosis over past 2 decades
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Hospitalization rates in patients with sarcoidosis in Canada decreased over the past 20 years, researchers reported in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
“Hospitalization rates in patients with sarcoidosis are declining, with women and those of younger age experiencing the largest reductions in sarcoidosis-related hospitalizations,” Lee M. Fidler, MD, MSc, with the medical care team staff in the division of respirology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the University of Toronto and the University Health Network, Toronto, and colleagues wrote.
Fidler and colleagues conducted a cohort study using health administrative data from 1996 to 2015 on 18,550 individuals with sarcoidosis in Ontario, Canada.
From 1996 to 2015, there were 33,516 all-cause hospitalizations and 1,725 sarcoidosis-related hospitalizations.
The adjusted all-cause hospitalization rate decreased 26% from 1996 to 2015, from 206.4 per 1,000 cases to 152.1 per 1,000 cases (P < .001). Researchers observed the largest decrease in all-cause hospitalization (67%) among younger patients aged 18 to 25 years (P < .001).
In addition, there was an 81% decrease in sarcoidosis-related hospitalization rates from 1996 to 2015, from 21.8 per 1,000 cases to 4.2 per 1,000 cases (P < .001). There were larger decreases in sarcoidosis-related hospitalization rates among women compared with men (87% vs. 72%; P = .004) and among patients aged 26 to 35 years (91%; P < .001).
Other factors associated with increased all-cause hospitalizations among patients with sarcoidosis were lower income (RR = 1.27; 95% CI, 1.18-1.37; P < .001) and rural residence (RR = 1.16; 95% CI, 1.08-1.24; P < .001).
“Socioeconomic and geographic factors influence the risk hospitalization rates in patients with sarcoidosis and should be considered a focus of future research,” the researchers wrote. “Physicians and health policymakers should be aware of these results to inform patients and disease resource allocation.”