Reasons for Hospitalization and All-Cause Mortality for Adults with Sarcoidosis

Purpose

Sarcoidosis is a multisystem immune disease with a high rate of hospitalization. There is a paucity of large population-based studies on sarcoid inpatients. We aimed to examine the reasons for hospitalizations and mortality of adult sarcoid patients utilizing the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database.

Methods

Adult hospitalizations in 2016-2019 NIS database with sarcoidosis (ICD-10 code D86) were analyzed. The “reason for hospitalization” and “reason for in-hospital death” were divided into 19 organ system/disease categories based on their principal ICD-10 hospital billing diagnosis.

Results

Among the 330,470 sarcoid hospitalizations, cardiovascular (20.4%) and respiratory (16.9%) diagnoses were the most common reasons for hospitalization. The most common individual diagnoses were sepsis and pneumonia. In-hospital death occurred in 2.4% of sarcoid hospitalizations. The most common reasons for death were infectious (30%), cardiovascular (20.7%), and respiratory (20.3%) diagnoses. The most common individual diagnoses in the deceased group were sepsis and respiratory failure. Finally, the sarcoid group had a higher frequency of complications including arrhythmias/heart blocks, heart failure, cranial neuropathies, hypercalcemia, iridocyclitis, myocarditis, and myositis. Sarcoid inpatients had longer length of stay (4 vs 3 days; p < .001) and higher median total hospital charges ($36,865 vs $31,742; p < .001).

Conclusions

The most common reasons for sarcoid hospitalizations were cardiovascular and respiratory. Nearly 1 in 40 hospitalizations resulted in death, with most common complications being conduction abnormalities and heart failure. The most common causes of in-hospital death were sepsis and respiratory failure. Sarcoid hospitalizations had 16% higher total hospital charges compared to nonsarcoid inpatients.