Trends in Hospital Admissions and Death Causes in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Spanish National Registry

Background: the admission and death causes of SLE patients might have changed over the last years. Methods: Analysis of the Spanish National Hospital Discharge database. All individuals admitted with SLE, according to ICD-9, were selected. The following five admission categories were considered: SLE, cardiovascular disease (CVD), neoplasm, infection, and venous-thromboembolic disease (VTED), along four periods of time (1997-2000, 2001-2005, 2006-2010, and 2011-2015). Results: The admissions (99,859) from 43.432 patients with SLE were included. The absolute number of admissions increased from 15,807 in 1997-2000 to 31,977 in 2011-2015. SLE decreased as a cause of admission (from 47.1% to 20.8%, p < 0.001), while other categories increased over the time, as follows: 5% to 8.6% for CVD, 8.2% to 13% for infection, and 1.4% to 5.5% for neoplasm (p < 0.001 for all). The admission mortality rate rose from 2.22% to 3.06% (p < 0.001) and the causes of death evolved in parallel with the admission categories. A significant trend to older age was observed over time in the overall population and deceased patients (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Better control of SLE over the past two decades has led to a decrease in early admissions, and disease chronification. As a counterpart, CVD, infections, and neoplasm have become the main causes of admissions and mortality.

Automated summary

Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in admissions for SLE patients, however, the percentage of SLE as a cause of admission has decreased. On the contrary, cardiovascular disease, infections, and neoplasm have become the main reasons for admissions and mortality.