Short Communication: Sex-Specific Time Trends in Very Elderly Patients (Aged ≧80 Years) Hospitalized with Myocardial Infarction

Objective: To assess sex-related time trends in the proportion of very elderly patients (age ≧80) hospitalized with myocardial infarction (MI). Subjects and Methods: Data were obtained from all states in the USA that contributed to the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. All patients admitted to hospital between 1997 and 2006 with a primary discharge diagnosis of MI, identified by the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision procedure codes were included. Percentages of MI hospitalizations comprising men and women aged ≧80 were evaluated. Results: Overall, between 1997 and 2006, the absolute number of MI hospitalizations decreased from 732,170 to 674,988, but the percentage of very elderly men rose in a roughly linear pattern by 2.84% from 14.2% in 1997 to 17.1% in 2006 (95% CI 1.9–3.8%, p 0.001) while among very elderly women, the percentages increased linearly by 4.95% from 31.0% in 1997 to 35.95% in 2006 (95% CI 3.6–6.3%, p 0.001). Comparing women to men, the rise was 1.74 times larger (95% CI 1.26–2.23, p = 0.03). Conclusions: Over the last decade, the percentage of very elderly women hospitalized with MI in the United States rose at almost twice the rate of similarly aged men. These trends may be expected to exponentially worsen given the aging global population.