Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Temporal Trends of Myocardial Infarction Hospitalizations Among Pregnant Women in the United States: 2009-2018

There has been an increase in the incidence of Myocardial Infarction (MI) among pregnant women in the United States. There have been no studies examining the trends in the rates of gestational MI hospitalizations by race/ethnicity;and therefore, we undertook this study. No prior studies have examined the trends in the rates of gestational MI hospitalizations by race and ethnicity. In this study, we examined temporal trends of MI-related hospitalizations among pregnant women using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) dataset from 2009 to 2018. We performed joinpoint regression analyses to assess trends in the rates of MI by race/ethnicity during the study period. Overall, there was an increase in the rates of MI among pregnant women during the study period (from 9.7 per 100,000 hospitalizations in 2009 to 18.1 per 100,000 hospitalizations in 2018) with an average annual percentage change (AAPC) of 7.2, (95% Confidence Interval (CI)=[4.0, 10.5]. The overall rate of MI was highest in non-Hispanic (NH)-Blacks and the greatest increments in rates of MI-related hospitalizations were noted in NH-Blacks during 2013-2018, and in Hispanics during the entire study period (2009-2018). NH-Blacks and Hispanics bear a disproportionately high burden of MI among pregnant women in the US. More worrisome is the first-ever reported finding in this study of a widening Black-White disparity in MI-related hospitalizations over the past decade.   Copyright © Dongarwar et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0.