Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Heart Failure and Transplantation
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2024.1475181

Hospitalizations and Cardiac Sarcoidosis: Insights into Presentation and Diagnosis from the Nationwide Readmission Database

Provisionally accepted
Jacob Abraham Jacob Abraham 1*Kateri Spinelli Kateri Spinelli 1Hsin-Fang Li Hsin-Fang Li 1Tuan Pham Tuan Pham 1Mansen Wang Mansen Wang 1Farooq H. Sheikh Farooq H. Sheikh 2
  • 1 Providence St. Joseph Health, Portland, United States
  • 2 MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) is an increasingly recognized cause of cardiac disease. Because the clinical presentation of CS is non-specific, the diagnosis is often delayed. Early detection is essential to initiate treatments that reduce the risk of heart failure (HF) and arrhythmic death. We therefore aimed to describe the features of CS hospitalizations during which the initial diagnosis of CS is made. We performed a retrospective analysis of hospitalizations from 2016-2019 in the Nationwide Readmission Database (NRD). Hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis suggestive of CS (HF/cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrest, arrhythmias, or heart block) were categorized into cases with and without CS as a secondary diagnosis (CS+ and CS-, respectively). One-to-one propensity score matching (PSM) was performed. The CS+ cohort comprised 1,146 hospitalizations and the CS-cohort 3,250,696 hospitalizations. The CS+ cohort included patients who were younger and more often male. PSM resulted in highly matched cohorts (absolute standardized mean difference <0.1). Primary diagnoses of ventricular arrhythmias (VA) or heart block were more frequent in matched CS+ hospitalizations, whereas primary diagnosis of HF/cardiomyopathy was more frequent in matched CS-hospitalizations. The matched CS+ group exhibited higher rates of in-hospital procedures and longer length of stay. In-hospital mortality and 30-day readmission were similar between matched cohorts. These findings highlight increased rates of CS in younger males with primary diagnoses of VA and heart block, and increased use of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions such as pacemaker and left ventricular assist device implantation, and could aid clinicians in more timely diagnosis and treatment of CS.

    Keywords: JA: Consultant, institutional principal investigator, speaker's honoraria -Abbott, Ks, HFL, tp, MW: none JA: Conceptualization, methodology

    Received: 03 Aug 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Abraham, Spinelli, Li, Pham, Wang and Sheikh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jacob Abraham, Providence St. Joseph Health, Portland, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.