Anemic RA and Osteoarthritis Patients Stay at Hospitals Longer

Arthritis patients that are also anemic stay at hospitals longer, undergo more procedures, and have higher hospitalization costs compared to non-anemic arthritis patients, according to a study carried out in public hospitals in France.

The study, published in the BMC Geriatrics, was designed to investigate associations between health care resource utilization in arthritis patients with and without concomitant anemia in a secondary setting.

The retrospective cohort study examined data on secondary care activity in 2001 from the Programme de Medicalisation des Systemes d’Information database. The team identified two cohorts using ICD-10 codes. One cohort was made up of diagnoses arthritis patients with diagnosed concomitant anemia. The other group consisted of arthritis patients without anemia.

The team found that there were s little more than 300,000 hospitalizations for patients with arthritis only and 2,744 for those with concomitant anemia. Seventy percent of those with concomitant anemia were in public hospitals, while there were only 53.5% of arthritis-only patients staying at these hospitals.

Those without anemia were also younger. Those with concomitant anemia/arthritis only had a mean length of stay of 11.91 days in public hospitals and 10.68 in private hospitals.