Objective: The aims of the study were to (a) determine rates of early, late, and overall 30-day all-cause readmission for women and men with the diagnosis of alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM), (b) examine hospital- and patient-level characteristics associated with the risk of readmission and how these factors differed by sex, and (c) examine the association between sex and in-patient mortality during readmission.
Method: We conducted a multi-year cross-sectional analysis of adult (≥18 years) inpatient hospitalizations in the United States. Descriptive statistics including frequencies and percentages were used to describe the study population, stratified by sex. We then used Poisson regression with robust error variance estimation to estimate risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) that represented the associations between sex and likelihood of 30-day all-cause readmission and inpatient mortality.
Results: Among more than 116 million hospitalizations, there were 53,207 ACM-related hospitalizations (45,573 men and 7,634 women). Thirty-day all-cause readmission rates following an ACM-related index hospitalization were similar between men (20.3%) and women (20.5%). For men and women, cancer, hepatitis, chronic renal failure, cirrhosis, asthma, and anemia were associated with a higher risk of readmission. Although crude in-hospital mortality rates were higher among women (6.6%) than men (4.3%), there were no sex differences in mortality after adjusting for confounders (RR = 1.26, 95% CI [0.88, 1.81]).
Conclusions: Although men are more likely to be hospitalized for ACM, readmission risk is high (approximately 20%) and is similar in men and women following hospitalization for ACM. Hospital care transition programs that include a multidisciplinary approach are needed to help prevent these readmissions and associated morbidity and mortality.