Non-White patients are younger at first HF hospitalization: study

Patients identified as non-Hispanic (NH) Asian, NH Black, and Hispanic are younger at the time of first hospitalization for heart failure (HF) than NH White adults in the Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure (GWTG-HF) registry, according to a study.

“Differences in social and clinical factors explained a large proportion of the racial and ethnic differences in age at first HF hospitalization,” the authors said.

A total of 42,252 patients with first captured HF hospitalization in GWTG-HF were included in the analysis. Of these, 2 percent self-identified as NH Asian, 24 percent as NH Black, 7 percent as Hispanic, and 67 percent as NH White.

NH Asian, NH Black, and Hispanic patients were significantly younger than NH White patients at the time of first hospitalization for HF (70.6, 60.1, and 65.4 vs 73.6 years; p<0.01).

Notably, racial and ethnic differences in social and clinical risk factors across groups significantly correlated with younger age at first HF hospitalization for NH Asian, NH Black, and Hispanic patients by 1.2, 12.5, and 7.4 years, respectively, relative to NH White patients.

This study included patients hospitalized in the GWTG-HF registry (2016‒2019) with no prior HF diagnosis. The authors assessed age at first HF hospitalization among NH Asian, NH Black, Hispanic, and NH White adults. They also estimated the proportion of racial and ethnic differences in clinical and social factors associated with age at first HF hospitalization using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition.