Trends of asthma hospitalisations in the USA between 2004 and 2017

What is it about?

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease and remains a common cause for hospitalization. But, studies looking at how hospitalization trends, burden of other diseases and in-hospital outcomes change over time in people with asthma are limited. We analysed 3,098,863 asthma hospitalizations in children and adults between 2004 and 2017 in the USA.

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Photo by Sahej Brar on Unsplash

Photo by Sahej Brar on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Latest previous US asthma hospitalizations studies are up to 2011 and, to the best of knowledge, this is the first study to examine temporal trends of asthma hospitalizations, patient and hospital factors, comorbidity burden, and in-hospital outcomes categorized by patient factors in the US. Our findings are based on a contemporary analysis of 3,098,863 US asthma hospitalizations show asthma admissions decreased, length of stays remained stable, while inflation-adjusted costs doubled between 2004 and 2017. We found that comorbidity burden, mainly mental illness, increased over time and was associated with adverse in-hospital outcomes in patients admitted with asthma, and common asthma comorbidities included hypertension, obesity, diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux, and anaemia. Our mapping of comorbidity profile by patient factors can help identify high-risk groups and highlights which comorbidity clusters are associated with poor in-hospital outcomes, to help inform tailored asthma management.