Thromb Haemost 2005; 93(02): 298-305
DOI: 10.1160/TH04-08-0506
Blood Coagulation, Fibrinolysis and Cellular Haemostasis
Schattauer GmbH

Effect of ethnicity and gender on the incidence of venous thromboembolism in a diverse population in California in 1996

Richard H. White
1   Division of General Medicine, University of California, Davis, California, USA
,
Hong Zhou
1   Division of General Medicine, University of California, Davis, California, USA
,
Susan Murin
2   Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of California, Davis, California, USA
,
Danielle Harvey
3   Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, California, USA
› Author Affiliations
Financial support: Hibbard E. Williams Endowment for General Medicine Research, UC Davis. This paper was presented July 15, 2003 at the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis meeting, Birmingham, England, and on May 2, 2003 at the Society of General Internal Medicine Meeting in Vancouver, CA.
Further Information

Publication History

Received 16 August 2004

Accepted after revision 28 January 2004

Publication Date:
11 December 2017 (online)

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Summary

There have been very few studies that have describe the epidemiology of first-time venous thromboembolism (VTE) in a large, ethnically diverse population. The California Discharge Data Set was used to identify a cohort of cases with incidentVTE in 1996. Cases associated with traditional provoking risk factors were identified and the remaining cases were labeled as idiopathicVTE. Direct standardization using census information was performed to compare incidence rates across races, gender, and gender within race. There were 21,002 cases with incident VTE in 1996, a crude incidence of 90 events per 100,000 adults. Thirty percent of all VTE events were pulmonary embolism. The directly standardized incidence per 100,000 California adults was 93 ± 1.7 ( ± 95% CI) in women, 85 ± 1.7 in men, 103 ± 2.1 in Caucasians, 138 ± 6.5 in African- Americans, 61 ± 2.8 in Hispanics and 29 ± 2.4 in Asian-Pacific Islanders (p<0.001 for all inter-group comparisons). After adjusting for misclassification of race, the incidence of VTE per 100,000 was 104 in Caucasians, 141 in African- Americans, 55 in Hispanics, and 21 in Asian/Pacific-Islanders. The incidence of idiopathic VTE was significantly lower among both Hispanics and Asian/Pacific-Islanders (p<0.001) than Caucasians or African-Americans. African-Americans were more likely, and Hispanics less likely, to be diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary embolism compared to Caucasians. The 28 day case-fatality rate among cases with idiopathic VTE was 2%, and it was significantly higher among African-Americans (4.1%) compared to Caucasians (1.8%, p<0.001).There are important differences in the incidence of total and idiopathicVTE and in the proportion of events diagnosed as pulmonary embolism among each of the major racial/ethnic groups in California. Further research is needed to explain these observed differences among the different racial/ethnic group.