Prevalence, co-morbidities, and in-hospital mortality of patients hospitalized with alcohol-associated hepatitis in the United States from 2015 to 2019.

Background: The goals of our study are to determine the most recent trends in hospitalization, mortality, and healthcare utilization among hospitalized patients with alcohol-associated hepatitis (AH) in the United States.

Methods: We examined the recent prevalence, co-morbidities, and mortality in hospitalized AH patients in the United States based on the available National Inpatient Sample (NIS) data (2015 to 2019) using appropriate International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. We reported our data as national estimates based on the discharge weighting variable (DISCWT). Logistic regression analyses were used to determine factors associated with mortality.

Results: We observed an increase in the total number of hospitalized AH patients from 110,135 in 2015 to 136,620 in 2019, which represented 386 per 100,000 total hospitalizations or 42 per 100,000 US population, which in 2019 was 328 million. Patients were a mean of 48 years old and the majority were White and male. The average length of stay was around 6 days with an overall in-hospital mortality that decreased from 4.19% in 2015 to 3.86% in 2019 (p-value for trend = <0.0001). During the 5-year study period, a total of 24,795 hospitalized AH patients died and 592,885 survived the hospital stay. Those who died were older, had a longer length of stay, and higher hospital charges during the stay. Mortality was significantly greater in patients who presented with complications from portal hypertension, those with acute renal failure, underlying cirrhosis, and sepsis.

Conclusions: Our study documented the increasing prevalence of hospitalized AH patients and their significant associated healthcare costs and utilization. Our results underscore a continuing unmet and urgent need to identify effective therapies for hospitalized AH patients.