Gender Differences in Outcomes after Non-traumatic Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background Nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhages (ICH) are serious cerebrovascular events with high morbidity and mortality. They occur in about two million people a year worldwide. While ICH continues to be a focus of research in the medical community, there is little data on the differences in outcomes by gender. We aimed to further investigate these differences in our study. Methods This analysis involves a de-identified dataset of all adult patients who presented to one of our hospital system's emergency departments with ICHs as one of the top three discharge diagnoses. This study was considered exempt by our medical school's Institutional Review Board (IRB). Our hospital system comprises over 176 hospitals in the United States with over 8.6 million emergency department visits annually. Logistic regression analyses were performed using JMP 14.1. Outcome variables included the length of stay, mortality, and disposition. Results The cohort (n = 8069) comprised 68% Caucasians, 17% Blacks, 5% Asians, and 1% Hispanic. Forty-eight percent of patients were females with a median age of 71 years. Fifty-two percent of patients were males with a median age of 65 years. One-fifth of the cohort (20%) died while another fifth (21%) were discharged home. Thirteen percent joined hospice. Women were significantly more likely to die or join hospice (p <0.0001, OR 1.304, 95% CI: 1.183-1.440) even after controlling for age. Women also had a significantly shorter length of stay even when controlled for age (P = 0.0002, 95% CI: -1.58 to -0.489, R(2) = 1.5%) with a median of four days for men and three days for women. Conclusion The median age for women with nontraumatic ICH is older than men, which could explain their increased rates of mortality and discharge to hospice. However, even after controlling for age, women were significantly more likely to die or be discharged to hospice. Conversely, men and younger patients had a longer hospital stay and a higher likelihood of being discharged home.