Black heart failure patients hospitalized twice as often as whites

Though the rate of heart failure hospitalizations has decreased over the last few years in the U.S., black Americans are still admitted at a higher rate than other ethnic and racial groups, according to a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The study, published in Circulation, was led by Boback Ziaeian, MD, PhD, a cardiologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His research examined millions of hospital discharges between 2002 and 2013 and revealed that the hospitalizations rate has dropped by 30 percent, a sign that preventive measures are effective.

However, the data showed that black patients didn’t fare as well as their counterparts of other races. The study showed that they were admitted for heart failure at more than twice the rate of white patients, which has been a trend for more than a decade.

“I think it’s underappreciated how the disparity becomes larger when we account for how much younger the African-American population is compared with whites,” said Ziaeian, a clinical instructor in the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

Results also showed that Hispanics and Latinos of any race with heart failure were much less likely to be hospitalized in 2013 compared to 2002. And the rate of them being hospitalized for heart failure was just 4 to 8 percent higher compared to white patients.