A new three-state study shows a slight decrease in inpatient procedures for 2.4 million patients treated for lower extremity peripheral arterial disease (PAD) between 1998 and 2007, but reveals gender disparities in emergent hospital admissions and mortality rates for women. New York, New Jersey, and Florida state hospital inpatient discharge databases were selected and reviewed. Details of the research were published in the February issue of the Journal of Vascular Surgery®, by the Society for Vascular Surgery®.
"Compared to men, women had 18 to 27 percent fewer lower extremity PAD hospitalizations per capita, and 33 to 49 percent fewer vascular procedural hospitalizations than men," says researcher Natalia N. Egorova, PhD, MPH, from the Department of Health Evidence and Policy, and vascular surgeon Ageliki Vouyouka, MD, from the division of vascular surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Women were persistently more likely than men to be admitted emergently: 56 percent of women vs. 51 percent men in 1998 and 57 percent vs. 53 percent in 2007, respectively.