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

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.

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.

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).

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.