Trends and Racial Differences in First Hospitalization for Stroke and 30-Day Mortality in the US Medicare Population From 1988 to 2013

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to determine whether there were temporal differences in the rates of first stroke hospitalizations and 30-day mortality after stroke between black and white Medicare enrollees. Methods: We used a 20% sample of Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years or older and described the annual rate of first hospitalization for ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes from years 1988 to 2013, as well as 30-day mortality after stroke hospitalization. We used linear tests of trend to determine whether stroke rates changed over time, and tested the interaction term between race and year to determine whether trends differed by race. Results: We identified 1,009,057 incident hospitalizations for ischemic strokes and 147,817 for hemorrhagic strokes. Annual stroke hospitalizations decreased significantly over time for both blacks and whites, and in both stroke subtypes (P-values for all trend
Source: Medical Care - Category: Health Management Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research