August 15, 2013

According to a recent study led by Dr. Longjian Liu, an associate professor at Drexel University School of Public Health (DUSPH), the prevalence of hospitalization attributable to hypertensive disease significantly increased among the U.S. adults from 1980 to 2007. Drs. Yuan An, PhD and Xiaohua Hu, PhD from Drexel University College of Information Science and Technology, and Drs. Edgar Chou, MD and Howard Eisen, MD from Drexel University College of Medicine are the article’s coauthors.

The study, which was published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Cardiology, analyzed more than 4.5 million hospitalized cases using data from 1980 to 2007 National Hospital Discharge Surveys in patients aged 35 and older. Patients with primary diagnosis (the reason for admission), or patients with any second to seven (i.e., as a comorbid disease) diagnosis of hypertensive disease, and its subtypes of hypertensive disease were analyzed by age, sex and survey years. The results show that age-adjusted hospitalization rates due to primary diagnosis of hypertensive disease increased in men and women, with a specific increasing trend in patients with comorbid hypertensive disease. Age-adjusted rates due to any second to seven diagnosis of hypertensive disease dramatically increased from 7.1% to 35.1% in men, and from 7.9% to 32.0% in women from 1980-1981 to 2006-2007. Of subtypes of hypertensive disease, patients with comorbid essential hypertension and hypertensive chronic kidney disease had the highest and the second highest annual percent increases. Patients living in the Southern region of the United States had the highest prevalence of hospitalization attributable to hypertensive disease compared with those living in the other regions in 2006 to 2007. 

Dr. Liu says that little information on a long-term trend and the burden of hospitalization attributable to hypertensive disease was available. The present study is the first to examine a 28-year trend of hospitalized patients with primary and any second to seven diagnosis of hypertensive disease using a large-scale nationally representative data. Findings from the study highlight the burden of hypertensive disease and add new evidence of a significantly increasing trend in patients with comorbid hypertension and hypertensive chronic kidney disease to the body of research.