Frequency and outcomes of venous thrombus embolism in hospitalized patients with Behçet's disease

Abstract

Background: Behcet’s Disease (BD) is a multisystem vasculitis characterized by skin-mucosa lesions, ocular, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, neurologic, and major vessel involvement. The objective of this present study was to investigate BD in the inpatient setting and the associated risk of contracting venous thrombus embolism. Methods: We utilized the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. The NIS is the largest inpatient care database in the United States, containing demographic and clinical information from approximately 8 million hospital stays from about 1000 hospitals sampled to approximate a 20% stratified sample of U.S. community hospitals. The 2016 NIS sample utilized ICD-10-CM/PCS diagnostic and procedure codes. Results: The 2016 NIS analysis was performed using 7,135,090 discharge summaries, of which 622 were "case" summaries associated with the ICD-10 code for Behcet's disease (M352). Case discharge summaries were also associated with a slightly longer hospital stay 5.6 days compared to 4.7 days. The percentage of VTE-related ICD codes was 2.8 times higher in case compared to control summaries (P = 4.4e-35). Overall, approximately 1 in 5 case summaries (19.45%) was linked to a VTErelated ICD code, compared to only 6.85% of control summaries. These trends were consistent in analyses performed for each sex separately. Case-male summaries were more frequently associated with VTE-related codes (28.19%) compared to case-female summaries (15.7%). Conclusion: Our study illustrates the association of BD and VTE-related ICD events.